Nation: The FBI's Show of Shows

ABSCAM's first trial reels on, with more to come

The witness entertained the jurors in the Brooklyn federal courtroom last week with reminiscences of how, as a young man of 17, he cruised around Long Island smashing windows with a slingshot to boost sales at his father's glass business. He told of swindling $30,000 from the Attorney General of Bolivia and, by age 50, becoming so adept at devising con games that he franchised them to other swindlers and earned the nickname "the McDonald's of con men." But in 1977, the FBI caught Melvin...

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