British expat arrested for 'sorcery' and 'black magic'

From the Herald's local press section.

A British expatriate, David Pringle, has been arrested by the authorities in Bahdobian's Northern Region and accused of committing 'sorcery' and 'black magic'.

The self-styled 'real estate sales consultant' was nabbed after tricking various people into believing he could turn their paltry property deposits into millions. Pringle promised his victims that, for a small outlay for 300,000BHDs, he would be able to give them back three to four times the original amount within three months.

Pringle would visit people at their homes in Bahdobian's Main District and show them brochures of fabulous buildings that he claimed would be built in the North within months. A small deposit, Pringle claimed, would secure 'investors' a cramped apartment or badly built villa in one of the developments. A few weeks later, Pringle would perform his black magic on the property, selling it on to someone else and presenting the original investor with three times the sum he had put in, minus Pringle's sorcery fee.

Hypnotised by tales of instant riches, Pringle found his victims eager to take part.

After parting with their cash and placing it in Pringle's large black-magic holdall, Pringle would go into a trance. Reciting tales of his other 'clients' who had made millions overnight buying cupboard-sized rooms in a high-rise next to a sewage plant, he would hold his hands over the money-stuffed bag, repeatedly winking at his victims, reciting 'flip it, flip it' and 'I'm gonna make you rich, darling, all right?'.

Pringle, a former hairdresser from Manchester before becoming a sorcerer and real estate sales consultant, would then disappear in a 2004 Porsche Boxter marked with the sign of the beast – a Manchester City sticker on one side of the rear bumper, set off by the Cross of St George on the other.

Early participants in Pringle's scheme claim they did see returns. Contacted by The Herald, Ray Cuthbert, also British, related that only two months after parting with his cash and watching Pringle perform his 'flipping ceremony', the cupboard he bought had tripled in value.

'Pringle visited me at my villa one afternoon in August 2008, a month or so after the flipping ceremony,' Ray told this paper. 'He placed the black-magic holdall on the floor in front of me. Then, telling me I could always trust a flipper, he bade me take a peek inside. I counted the money it contained and was thrilled to see that I had indeed tripled my investment. Pringle then took a share of the cash as his flipping fee. After his cut, taken in return for providing me with his magical powers, I took home a profit of around $200 on an investment of about $200,000,' he smiled.

'You can't argue with that,' he told us. 'Previously, I'd been skeptical about whether black-magic, sorcery and blind trust would make a good mix when it came to property investment , but now I have the proof'.

Not all of Pringle's victims were so lucky, however.

Gerhard Arschbacken's story was typical. After the flipping ceremony took place some time in October 2008, he never heard from Pringle again. He did, however, receive demands from the property company to keep up payments on the oddly shaped box room for which he had paid a deposit. Now worth a tenth of its original value, Arschbacken is in dire financial straits.
'I'm a fool,' he told us. 'I should have known that even someone with magical powers couldn't have turned my small deposit on a box room in a stretch of sand into millions of dollars. Pringle promised me that I could flip the apartment onto people like Sharon Stone or Beyonce. He said all sorts of high-flyers would want to live in my luxury cupboard. Astonishingly, they don't.'

Faced with financial ruin, Arschbacken's only hope is to sell a kidney in order to keep up the payments, renting out the finished one-bedroom box room to twenty labourers once it is finished in 2026.

Pringle, who has been placed in solitary confinement after trying to get his cellmates to invest in the exclusive southern corner of their prison cell, is expected to be charged later this week. His black magic holdall has been destroyed by Police, just in case.