Africa is currently recognized as a fraud hotspot due to persistent internet scams. And while fraud committed online or over the phone is simple to understand, the phony embassy scam perpetrated in Ghana is on a whole different level.

Authorities in 2016 paid particular attention to the US Embassy in Accra, Ghana. The embassy had been conducting the usual activities of an embassy for ten years, such as providing visas. Outside, an American flag was flying, and a picture of Barack Obama was hanging on the wall. However, the embassy was a fake. For about $6000, con artists were selling counterfeit documents.

As part of a combined operation between US and Ghanaian forces, the fake embassy was stormed and the con artists were detained, shutting down the entire operation. The US Department of State provided all of this information, which is still detailed on their website. But here is when things start to become strange.

An investigative journalist chose to follow up with Ghanaian police, who were unaware of the nature of the tale. The Ghana Detectives Bureau, which the State Department claims to have worked with on the raid, is not even a legitimate Ghanaian law enforcement agency.

The raid was not carried out by local police, and no other police officers nationwide were aware of it. Additionally, one of the fraud investigators who would have been working on a case similar to this if it were true took the photograph of the fictitious embassy that was included with the story. In response to a tip that the facility was granting fraudulent visas, he shot the photo early this year, but he discovered nothing there. He also took other images at different locations and times.

This false embassy is a double fake, as far as anyone can determine. Since the State Department has stuck to its story despite a mountain of evidence that the story of the fake embassy is false, it appears that they faked it for unknown reasons. In this case, the fake was made from scratch. Perhaps for PR purposes, perhaps not. It's difficult to say when nobody is defending themselves.

Ever see the diploma hanging on the wall of your doctor? It probably offers you some comfort to know the doctor is skilled in what they're doing. What about at a hospital, though? How is your nurse doing? Do you have faith in their abilities?

A woman in Canada managed to work as a nurse for 20 years despite having no formal schooling. She used her identity to work, including during surgeries, and had the same name as a real nurse. She wasn't discovered until she disclosed some discrepancies with the real nurse about her license number. There is no information on whether her work has ever caused harm to anyone.

After admitting to using fictitious credentials to be hired as a nurse by the Jonquière hospital and work there for 20 years, a lady from Quebec was sentenced to pay a $100,000 fine. She received a harsh fine, two years in prison without credit for time served, and community service. She won't spend her her sentence in a cell, though.

You might not be familiar with Carlos Kaiser even if you're a pro-football, or soccer, fan. You will never, ever see clips of him even attempting to kick a ball because it never happened. He played for 13 different teams over the course of his more than 20-year career, including Flamengo and Vasco de Gama.

Coming from Rio de Janeiro, he made friends with both players and club owners, bragging about what a terrific player he was. He never played in front of anyone, but because of how charming he was, everyone believed him. He would sign with a team and then get hurt right away, never having to play. He hired onlookers to yell his name when the bosses were present and played kids to mob him so he could pretend to get harmed.

Kaiser claimed that while he enjoyed being a player and being among other players, he never enjoyed actually playing. He survived years of inactivity through lies, con games, and ruses. Another team would fall for his lovely falsehoods when one team became tired of him, and the game would go on.

The common folk enjoys the concept of misplaced royalty for some reason. It's difficult to resist the notion that someone has a hidden talent, which is how Sarah Wilson became known as Princess Susanna Caroline Matilda of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

She was actually a prisoner, but in 1772, after freeing herself from servitude, she persuaded people that she was the Queen's sister. She visited North Carolina and Virginia, making friends with dignitaries and politicians.

She was familiar with courtly etiquette and could support her accusations with a stolen portrait of the Queen. After being eventually apprehended by the guy who had bought her, she arranged yet another escape, got married, and eventually vanished without a trace.

Beethoven is regarded as one of the finest composers in history, which is all the more amazing considering that he finally lost his hearing. Mamoru Samuragochi, known as Japan's Beethoven, was a well-known composer who was mistaken for being deaf for 18 years. He actually made that up and was perfectly capable of hearing. Additionally, he wasn't a true composer; rather, someone else wrote his music.

He allegedly lost his hearing at the age of 35 yet continued to write, contributing to well-known video game titles like Resident Evil. Later, his ghostwriter exposed him by claiming that the man could hear very well but couldn't read music. Samuragochi asserted that he had only recently begun to regain his hearing. He once answered the door for a reporter who was interviewing him. Eventually, he acknowledged that his hearing was not as terrible as he had claimed, and he returned the disability certificate.

The former president of the World Trade Center Survivors Network, Tania Head, is one of those con artists who just seems shadier than the rest. It would seem that being a 9/11 survivor would be the primary qualification for employment in such a position, but Head was not one. She simply made it up.

Head asserted that when the jet struck on September 11, she was in the South Tower. No less on the floor it struck. In the chaos, she burned herself and came close to losing her arm. Welles Crowther, a guy who gave his life saving lives during the catastrophe, brought her to safety. Days later, she claimed, she awoke in a hospital with the news that her husband had passed away in the North tower.

The woman's story was untrue, it turned out. The deceased was occasionally her fiance, but he was also her husband. Although Merrill Lynch didn't designate her as an employee, she claimed to work there. Her supposed colleges, Stanford and Harvard, also lacked any records.

She actually went by the name of Alicia Head. She was attending a class in her doctoral program in Barcelona, Spain, on September 11, 2001. Strangely enough, other survivors in the network observed that she did wonderful work, garnering money and exposure for them despite her lies. She gave her own money instead of taking any for herself. Their best estimate is that she had a strange need to be the focus of the story even if she was really sympathetic to what had transpired.

Corporal Maxwell Klinger is a character that you might recognize if you've ever watched the television series M*A*S*H, which is set in a military hospital during the Korean War. Klinger frequently wore women's attire with the intention of getting dismissed from the service under Section 8. He was jokingly pretending to be mentally ill, which would be justification for a medical and honorable discharge, but no one accepted it, so he just carried out his tasks while dressed as a woman. Lenny Bruce, a real-life comedian, served as a significant influence on the character.

Bruce allegedly "acted as a transvestite" in order to receive an honorable release from the military, according to some accounts, although that doesn't seem to be totally accurate. The character from M*A*S*H appears to be supporting the cross-dressing scenario, which may be a sanitized version of what Bruce actually did. Bruce claimed in letters that he pretended to be gay rather than a cross-dresser.

He would have needed to be both unfit for duty and not in a shameful fashion in order to get an honorable discharge. He told his doctors that he felt queer impulses as a result. His writing suggests that he told them that he was having trouble controlling these thoughts and that he utterly despised them, but they had emerged out of the blue. He claimed that despite wanting to have sex, he only ever kissed other soldiers. He basically portrayed it as a problem that he was pleading for assistance to solve. They complied, believing that an honorable discharge would "heal" him.

When Scepan Mali arrived in Montenegro in 1766, it was. He came from nowhere and had no history that has been recorded for posterity. Although he claimed to be Tsar Peter III, his claim to fame was that he was a herbalist and adept healer. He didn't seem to be Russian, which was noteworthy, but more crucially, Tsar Peter III had passed away in 1762.

He was, according to the tale, looking for safety from his adversaries. It appears that, at least in public, he never actually asserted his claim to be the Tsar. Instead, stories started to circulate, which he refused to refute while also making indications that they might be genuine, until it seemed like everyone was aware of the story.

He was proclaimed monarch of Montenegro by the assembly, which was an unexpected turn of events, and ruled the state for the following six years. Even the Russians, who had dispatched envoys to remove him, later endorsed him as leader since he appeared to be capable of handling the position. His authority only came to an end when Ottoman soldiers paid a servant to kill him.

In 2015, the drama surrounding a woman by the name of Rachel Dolezal captivated the internet. Before her qualifications started to be questioned, she presided over the NAACP chapter in Spokane. nor, of course, her education. They inquired about her race. And it turns out that they were right. Dolezal was also white because she was born to white parents. She had made the decision to live her life as an African American lady, and that was how she wanted to be perceived by others.

Dolezal brought attention to her personal predicament by claiming a number of unproven hate crimes had been committed against her. Reporters started to discover gaps in her biography as they looked into these claims, particularly about her family. Despite the fact that her original parents were both white and that she appeared to be a fair-skinned blonde girl in childhood images, she insisted that an African American man who appeared in photographs was her father and that an adoptive brother was actually her son. Dolezal's mother claimed that she had been employing her artistic abilities to make herself appear Black.

Surprisingly, she made no apologies after the whole truth was exposed, and she was called out for showing disregard for the struggles and history of Black people in America. In actuality, she maintained her stance and said that she still identifies as Black.

It was claimed that the conservationist known as Grey Owl was responsible for saving the Canadian beaver from extinction. He lectured, authored books, and discussed the world's dangerous impact of man. He tried to persuade people that they needed to live in harmony with nature rather than destroying it. Overall, a wonderful undertaking for this enigmatic man who was half Apache and half Scottish but was a total phony.

The birth of Grey Owl Theodore Stansfeld Belaney was born in England's East Sussex county of Hastings. He was entirely British and not at all Native American. Though he performed the role, he spent the majority of his time in Canada. He dressed in typical Native attire, down to his moccasins, and had feathered braids on his hair.

Belaney migrated to Canada at the age of 17 in or around 1905 because he was attracted as a child by tales of Native Americans. After getting married to an Ojibwa lady and learning the language, he made up the identity of a half-Apache, half-white man. He would later marry women and pick up skills from other native Canadians.

He published works on conservation that were so well-liked that audiences at Buckingham Palace and other prestigious venues called him to give lectures. His wife didn't divulge his full identity till after his passing. Ironically, after lying about himself the entire time, the revelation has damaged the memory of a man who was actually a wonderful conservationist and truly helped the environment and local species.