Meet Foutanga Babani Sissoko, who was born in the village of Dabia, to the West of Mali's capital, Bamako.
In the 1990s Foutanga scammed a Dubai bank into giving him over $200 million and he faced practically no time for it 😞😞.
But this isn't the craziest part—the craziest part is that he allegedly pulled off this scam using black magic 🪄✨.
Foutanga Babani Sissoko was an illiterate man from a small village in Mali, and he spoke virtually no English 😯, yet somehow he was able to persuade the manager of Dubai Islamic Bank to give him $242 million by making the man believe that he had supernatural powers. Sissoko claimed he could double the money through mystical rituals.
Between 1995 to 1998, the bank manager made 183 transfers into Foutanga's accounts, believing each time that Sissoko would return the money multiplied. Instead, the fortune vanished into his pockets 😔.
And this was just the beginning of Foutanga's grand plans. Just a few weeks after his Dubai scam was set in motion, Foutanga walked into another bank in New York. There he met a bank teller named Mona, who quickly became enchanted by his charisma and bold promises. Soon after, they married.
This marriage would later facilitate a wire transfer of more than $100 million into the United States. With this money, Foutanga began building his empire. He purchased mansions, fleets of luxury cars, and even opened his own airline in West Africa called Air Dabia, named after his humble village in Mali. He transformed his image from a poor villager into a flamboyant billionaire almost overnight.
His newfound wealth turned him into a legend. Newspapers in Mali described him as a "man touched by magic." He showered gifts on politicians, bought gold jewelry by the kilogram, and funded lavish parties where he was treated like royalty. But behind the curtains, Interpol was already taking notice.
In 1996, Sissoko attempted to illegally export two Vietnam-era UH-1 ("Huey") helicopters to Gambia. Because they could be converted into gunships, they required a special export license. His associates tried to bypass the law by offering a $30,000 bribe to a U.S. customs officer. The plan backfired spectacularly—the officer turned them in, and both men were arrested.
Foutanga himself was sent to Miami, Florida, and held in custody. Yet even in jail, he displayed his bizarre power of persuasion. Within days, he secured bail—an eye-watering $20 million, the highest Florida had ever seen at the time.
With his trial still ten months away, Sissoko went on an insane spending spree. He bought more than 30 luxury cars, showered his defense team with brand-new Mercedes Benz cars, and once spent half a million dollars in a single jewelry shop visit. He was said to burn through over a million dollars every single month while awaiting trial.
Eventually, Foutanga's day came in court. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to just 43 days in prison and a $250,000 fine. Even that fine was secretly paid by the Dubai Islamic Bank—without its knowledge.
But Sissoko only served half his sentence. He was released early after donating a million dollars to a homeless shelter. From there, he was deported to Mali, where he was greeted not as a criminal, but as a hero 🤗. People celebrated him as a man who had beaten the West at its own game.
Sadly, Dubai Islamic Bank never recovered its losses. Courts in Dubai later sentenced Sissoko in absentia for fraud, and Interpol issued a warrant. But Mali had no extradition treaty, so Foutanga remained untouchable. He went on to become a member of Mali's parliament for 12 years and even served as mayor of his hometown.
Despite his fame, Foutanga squandered his wealth. His airline collapsed, his fortunes dwindled, and his empire crumbled. After a long illness, he passed away at the age of 79. Yet before his death 💀, he was arrested once again—in Geneva, Switzerland, while attempting to open a new bank account. He was extradited to the United States but served little meaningful punishment.
His life remains one of the most bizarre tales of fraud in modern history. A man who began as a poor villager, who claimed to wield magic, and who fooled one of the world's largest banks into funding his legend.
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Now, check this wild coincidence from history 😜
One night in 1864, an actor named Edwin Booth was standing at a packed train platform. The crowd was thick with people pushing and shoving each other to purchase tickets. In the chaos, Edwin noticed a young man dangerously close to the edge of the platform, right in the path of an incoming train.
The young man lost his footing and began to slip into the narrow gap between the train and the platform. With lightning reflexes, Edwin lunged forward, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him back to safety—just as the train roared past.
The young man, still pale and shaken, turned to thank his savior. To his shock, the man who had just saved his life was none other than Edwin Booth, the most famous stage actor in America at the time 🤔.
The rescued man introduced himself: Robert Todd Lincoln, the first son of President Abraham Lincoln.
It was a strange twist of fate. But the story gets darker. Only a year later, in 1865, Edwin Booth's younger brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre.
Think about that—one brother saved the President's son, while the other murdered the President himself.
Even more chilling: Robert Todd Lincoln would go on to have eerie connections to other presidential assassinations. He was present at the train station when President James Garfield was shot in 1881. He was also at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901 when President William McKinley was assassinated. Historians often remark that Robert seemed cursed to always be near America's darkest political tragedies.
Edwin Booth, haunted by his brother's crime, lived the rest of his life in sorrow. Yet the single act of saving Robert Todd Lincoln gave him a shred of redemption in history.
When we look at these stories together—Foutanga's incredible scams and the strange Lincoln-Booth coincidences—they remind us that history is filled not only with facts, but with drama, irony, and twists so bizarre they seem almost fictional.