2025-12-15
33 分钟This is The Guardian.
World of Secrets uncovers a network of scammers deceiving desperate parents searching
for help for their children with cancer.
I trusted him a lot and this is what he did to me.
Who say they never received the money raised in their children's names.
They promised him toys and whatever he wanted if he agreed to film the video.
Please help me, please.
World of Secrets, the child cancer scam from the BBC World Service.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to The Guardian Long Read,
showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.
For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to TheGuardian.com forward slash long read.
It is a drizzly October afternoon and I'm sitting in a rural Lancashire pub drinking pints of Moretti with London's leading snail farmer and a convicted member of the Naples Mafia.
We're discussing the best way to stop a molluscogee.
The farmer, a 79-year-old former shoe salesman called Terry Ball,
who has made and lost multiple fortunes,
has been cheerfully telling me in great detail for several hours,
about how he was inspired by former Conservative Minister Michael Gove to use snails to cheat local councils out of tens of millions of pounds in taxes.
His method is simple.
First he sets up shell companies that breed snails in empty office blocks.