God's Little Acura

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. It's up to you whether to act on it, but you should know ahead of time that an opportunity like this might not arise again in your life. So hear me out.

All right. What if I told you that your days of listening to that rusty old muffler are over? That you won't have to spend another dreary morning outside waiting for the bus, inhaling diesel fumes and freezing your butt off?

Or perhaps you don't have any car problems. In which case I suggest that it might be time to upgrade. Because for everything you're currently getting out of the sedan, there's really no need to borrow your brother-in-law's pickup when there's hauling to be done. For that matter, where in the rules does it say you have to go without an SUV when you can have one for as little as $1,000? This is, after all, America.

Now, you tell me to mind my own business, shut my pie hole, move on down the road. You've heard this line before, and it ends with fourteen unwanted magazine subscriptions in your name. To which I say: Relax. Take a deep breath.

Because -- and I want you to really think about it, now -- this sort of thing happens all the time. It's just that it usually doesn't happen to you or me. No, it tends to happen to people whose mufflers don't misbehave. In 1956, for example, an unknown investor named Warren Buffett recruited seven people to take part in a stock-market venture. They pitched in and gave him $105,000. In five years, he turned it into $7.2 million.

Like I said, this sort of thing happens to other people all the time.

Now it's your turn.

Are you with me now? OK, here's the deal: You can have a late-model Honda Accord, fully loaded, for $1,000. Or you can have a Cadillac Escalade for $2,000. You can have a Toyota, Lexus, Porsche, BMW, Ford, even your very own Freightliner, all for prices so low it'll put you in church on Sunday.

I know what you're thinking now. You're thinking: Do I look that stupid? And you know what? You're good and right to think that way, because who the hell am I? But then you ask a relative, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor. Or you ask your pastor. And they've already had your exact same doubts, asked your exact same questions -- and concluded that this might just be the best opportunity of their lives.

Now you feel a little better. And because you don't want to miss out on this chance of a lifetime, you hand over a check. And in return you get a receipt and a phone number to call if you have any questions or if you change your mind and want to back out. Which, I might add, is perfectly fine, because this deal comes complete with a 100 percent money-back guarantee.

Still, you get a little nervous, a touch of anxiety and remorse. And you find yourself dialing the number on the receipt, fully expecting a recording from the phone company or maybe a French girl talking dirty. But sure enough, a receptionist answers, "Auto Emporium," very businesslike, and she assures you that the car -- your car -- is on its way, though maybe you shouldn't expect it until March or April because there are so many cars and so many people, OK?

You hang up feeling a lot better. For a while everything's great. But then spring comes and goes, and still no car. So you call the number on the receipt again. This time it's voicemail, and you leave a message, but no one calls back. So you call one more time, and now the line is disconnected. And that's when you hear from your relative/friend/coworker/pastor -- or maybe even from me -- that there are no cars.

There never were.

Now your stomach sinks, and it stays like that for days as you start reading about all this in the paper: how attorneys for the federal government say this was all part of an elaborate scam that crisscrossed the country. You feel gullible and ashamed, even though you now know that you're in a class that numbers into the thousands. How many, exactly? Well, even the federal prosecutors aren't sure, but they believe they've nabbed the four main culprits.

The first three, two men and a woman, are accused of masterminding the scam. The fourth ... well, the fourth is different. The fourth is a woman named Corinne Conway. She's 62 years old and lives about 50 miles east of Kansas City in Higginsville, a quiet little town noteworthy mainly for a stunning park dedicated to Confederate soldiers and a Fourth of July fireworks display that blows away the efforts of a lot of big cities. Of course, that was before all of this came up. Now Higginsville is known as the home of Corinne Conway, who stands accused of recruiting folks from churches across the nation to buy cars that did not exist, and who, prosecutors say, profited to the tune of about a million ill-gotten dollars. She's what they're calling a "finder." And for that she might now spend the rest of her life in prison.