Rich Pianist Paid Millions to Protect Himself From Fictional Assassination Plot
A Latin Grammy-winning pianist and wealthy oil heir was scammed out of as much as $20 million by computer repairpersons who convinced him that Polish priests from Opus Dei were targeting him for assassination. Oldest scam in the book.
Roger Davidson, a composer an pianist whose latest album is Brazilian Love Song, is an heir to the Schlumberger oil fortune. He is perhaps not the world's most computer-savvy pianist. In 2004, he took his computer into a repair shop in Mount Kisco, NY, saying he had a virus.
The owners of the repair shop, Vickram Bedi and Helga Invarsdottir, figured out that Davidson was rich. Then they rolled out the old "it's no ordinary computer virus" trick. The WSJ reports:
Mr. Bedi told Mr. Davidson that he had tracked the source of the virus to a remote village in Honduras and that Mr. Bedi's uncle, purportedly an officer in the Indian military, had traveled there in a military aircraft and retrieved the suspicious hard drive, prosecutors said.
In addition, Mr. Bedi told the victim that his uncle had uncovered an assassination plot against Mr. Davidson by Polish priests tied to Opus Dei, according to prosecutors.
So long story short, the two went ahead and "charged Mr. Davidson about $160,000 every month for bogus security and other services." For quite a while! Now they've been arrested. Mr. Davidson: your only protection from Opus Dei is gone now. Contact us at once. There is no time to lose.
