OSLO, May 10, 2008 (AFP) - A Vietnamese man in Norway lost around 35,000 dollars after he was led to believe that mixing the cash with a special liquid would double its value, Norwegian media reported Saturday.
    A 32-year-old Frenchman is set to stand trial in a lower court near Oslo next week on charges that he cheated a gullible Vietnamese man out of 180,000 kroner (35,00 dollars, 23,000 euros) earlier this year, local daily Romerikes Blad (RB) reported on its website.
    The victim of the con, who was not identified, was reportedly told by the Frenchman to leave a mixture of real cash with blank bills to marinate in a special liquid overnight, and the next morning he would have double the amount of cash at his disposal.
    But when he showed up the next morning to collect his prize, both the cash and the suspected con-artist, whose name was not revealed, had disappeared.
    "He has given a statement that leads us to believe that he really believed this was possible. But we are of course having a hard time understanding how someone could actually believe such a tall tale," Ragnar Ingberg, a police officer in Romerike, near the Norwegian capital, told RB.
    On March 3 this year, the Frenchman was arrested while trying to leave the country from the Oslo airport with nearly 200,000 kroner in his possession.
    The man's defence lawyer, Jan Schjatvet, told RB his client had come to Norway to find used cars in mint condition to sell in Africa, and that he was flabbergasted at the charges against him.
    "He is extremely surprised to be charged with something that is so incredible. This sounds completely crazy," he told the paper.