You’ve all heard those stories about people selling swamp land and so on …

Well rather than sell some sucker a bridge, a California man - Steven Ferguson - made off with $5 million dollars when he sold off a waste treatment plant in New Jersey.

the smooth talker promised huge returns on the investments that his soon to be victims thought was going to be a waste treatment plant.

He has since been sentenced to 11 years in prison and ordered to pay $6 million in fines.

Municipal waste?

The Havering town council in Romford, England, prepared a 300-page report in October, which was the result of a 12-month investigation, to find out who had heckled a speaker at a zoning meeting by making “baaa” noises. The authors said they had narrowed the list of suspects.

Can you believe a council would be created and money wasted to find a heckler? Is it so bad to be Baaaahed at a zoning meeting? I guess it is. If I was a tax payer in Romford they’d be hearing a lot more than Baaaing right now.

In September, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone defended his downtown anti-pigeon program, which consisted of empowering two hawks to scare the birds away, even though the three-year cost of the program, including a handler, was the equivalent of more than $400,000, which reduced the menace by 2,500 pigeons, or about $170 a bird.

The hawks probably got rid of a lot more than pigeons too. I think I’d be afraid to let a small dog or a cat outdoors there.