Outline:
Email forward claims that attached photographs show a $4.8 million diamond covered Mercedes owned by Prince Waleed of Saudi Arabia.
Brief Analysis:
Genuine photographs – Description is false
Subject:DIAMOND COVERED MERCEDES
THE CAR COSTS $4.8 MILLION
AND IF YOU WANT TO TOUCH IT, YOU HAVE TO PAY $1000.
IT BELONGS TO PRINCE WALEED FROM SAUDI ARABIA.
Diamond Covered Mercedes
of Prince Waleed
Remember this when gasoline hits $5.00 a gallon.
You paid for this one.
Detailed Analysis:
According to this email forward, attached photographs depict an amazing diamond covered Mercedes motor vehicle that belongs to Saudi Arabia’s Prince Waleed. The email claims that the vehicle is worth $4.8 million and that interested visitors have to pay $1000 just to touch it.
The photographs themselves are genuine in the sense that they show a real vehicle and they have not been manipulated to change the car’s appearance. However, the claims in the text of the email are highly inaccurate. The shiny objects covering the Mercedes are in fact crystals, not diamonds, and the vehicle does not belong to Prince Waleed. In fact, the Mercedes was an exhibit provided by luxury car accessories company, Garson, for a 2007 Auto Show in the United States. Garson offers a large range of crystal covered vehicle accessories. A blurb on the Garson website notes:
Hot on DUB Magazine’s Custom Auto Show & Concert tour is this million dollar car, Garson / D.A.D’s crystal-encrusted Mercedes-Benz SL 600. 300,000 Swarovski crystals are attached to the exterior of the body while it sits on 20″ rims. You can catch this car at the Los Angeles and San Diego shows. Garson USA will also be on site selling some of their hottest items.
The car can be seen as part of the slide show on the Garson website homepage as well as in a DUB 2007 Tour Picks gallery on flickr. The car can also be seen along with other auto show exhibits in the following YouTube video:
As the video shows, the crystal covered Mercedes was just one exhibit in an extensive collection shown at the auto show. Visitors were not charged $1000 just to touch it.
Moreover, the quoted price for a car supposedly covered in diamonds is very unrealistic. In 2006 a diamond adorned bra made for Victoria’s Secret by Hearts On Fire was valued at $6.5 million. Several years earlier, Hearts On Fire created a diamond dress worth $5 million. Thus, if a vehicle was really covered with diamonds rather than Swarovski crystals, it would be worth considerably more than $4.8 million.
Prince Al-Walid is a real, and certainly very wealthy, individual but he does not own the crystal covered Mercedes shown in the photographs.
Last updated: 14th July 2008
First published: 14th July 2008
By Brett M. Christensen
About Hoax-Slayer
References
Garson
Garson – Crystal Collection
flickr – Tour Picks-127
Stocking Stuffer: Victoria’s Secret $6.5 Million Diamond Fantasy Bra
Swarovski crystals
Al-Waleed bin Talal
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
