It was my summer of flying saucers-- and fraud.

Someone had posted an ad on a local BBS, looking for people wanting to start businesses as 900 number owners. 900 numbers no longer exist. Essentially, you would call a number with the area code of 900, and pay to listen to whatever message they had.

I emailed this person. I had the perfect idea: a 900 number for UFO reports. I was a UFO skeptic then, as I am now. I had the two vital requirements for being prominent in the UFO community: 1) I was a True Believer at one time, so I knew how they thought, and 2) like all successful people in the UFO community (Travis Walton, Ed Walters, Whitley Strieber and so on) I had complete and total contempt for my potential audience.

I got an email back, almost right away. Let's call this person Steve Doofus. He loved my idea, and thought it had great potential. After a few phone calls, and one meeting, we had it all set.

"You could go to these people directly and get a 900 number for under $100," Steve said (more than once), "but then you wouldn't have me to help you through the process." I was convinced of that from day 1. It felt odd that he repeated it so often, but being a credulous sort when it comes to business, I didn't question it.

Steve's fee: $300. I gladly paid it. The Big Bucks would surely be rolling in.

For UFO reports, I subscribed to Lucius Farish's excellent "UFO Newsclipping Newsletter." Steve suggested getting copies of "The Weekly World New" as a backup source. "The Weekly World News" was not so much a tabloid as it was a genre of fiction, complete with characters like Bat Boy and so on.

I cobbled together some fake UFO photos, and a friend of mine draw an alien for me. The alien had Captain Harlock's uniform, with a penis for a head. Perfect.

The fanzine "UFO Connections" was created to generate publicity for the 900 number. I got copies of "Fate" and other woo woo magazines, and contacted the other advertisers in them. My plan was to trade ads with other UFO fanzine editors. I got a few people to trade ads. The people that were the most willing to trade ads were the members of the UFO bottom feeder community.

"UFO Connections" went out, with Captain Penis on the cover. No one got the joke; not even the US post office.

I got my 900 number. I sent classified ads to the major woo woo magazines, including "Fate."

"Fate" was founded by a hunchbacked dwarf named Ray Palmer. Palmer was editor of "Amazing Stories" from them late 1930s to the mid 1950s. His main claim to fame was that he printed stories by Richard S Shaver, a paranoid schizophrenic who believed his welding torch dictated those stories to him. Shaver's stories were allegedly written in pencil on old grocery bags. So I guess all of you can see why it was so necessary for me to advertise in that magazine.

A month or two passed. I was spending a lot of money to keep the line open, with no income. The line had to go. Steven was sympathetic. He wanted me to send him another $300, to end the program. I didn't have the money, but I offered to make payments. I never heard from him again. He had left town.

I still had that local voice mail line for the rest of the month. What to do? I decided to have some fun. My message on it was changed to "You have reached the FORMER offices of UFO Connections. After much research, we have found that all UFO reports are either mis identifications of natural phenomena, or downright hoaxes. To read more on the subject, consult books by Robert Sheaffer or Philip J. Klass."

I got one call. This woman sounded angry. "If you don't believe in UFOs, then you are some sort of a moron," she said. Hmmm. So UFOs are not a matter of fact, but a matter of faith? And lack of faith makes you stupid? Interesting.

Years later,I bought a book called "Biz Op," by Bruce Easley. A biz op is a phony business opportunity. The biz opper sells people phony businesses that are guaranteed to lose money. When the biz opper collects his payment, he hightails it out of town.

I laughed and laughed at that book. And then I realized: I had been biz opped. It wasn't so funny after that.