Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Swindler thanks tellers with cream pie FARSTA, Sweden, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A Swedish man fooled bank employees into giving him almost $2 million and then presented them with a cream pie as thanks for their fine service, officials said. Advertisement The 36-year-old man, of Farsta, near Stockholm, Sweden, was arrested during the summer and has been sentenced for fraud and unrelated drug offenses, TT/ The Local reported. The man handed two phony checks to bank tellers and gave a fake telephone number to verify his checks. The teller phoned the number, spoke with the man's accomplice and approved the checks. Two days later the fraudster came to the bank to pick up his loot. Dressed in a suit and exuding confidence, the man appeared on security camera footage walking with an employee to a vault to take out gold bars and euro notes. Advertisement After gaining possession of the money, the man handed a pie to the bank staff as a gesture of thanks. A bank employee discovered the fraud when the man tried to get away with a third check, but by then he had escaped. "A spectacularly executed crime which also resulted in a long prison sentence," prosecutor Eva Wintzell said. -0- Real-life vamps not like movie versions ATLANTA, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Atlanta-area residents who claim to be real-life vampires say don't have much sympathy for glamorous movie and TV bloodsuckers. The pouting young beauties of the "Twilight Saga" movies and the CW Network's "Vampire Diaries" have little in common with members of the 4-year-old Atlanta Vampire Alliance, whose members say they suck energy from people and only occasionally drink small amounts of blood, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. "Merticus," an alliance organizer, told the newspaper real vamps are no different, physically or psychologically, from anyone else. "We could be the model-train group down the street from you," he said, adding that they don't have supernatural powers such as immortality or skin that sparkles in the sunlight. The Journal-Constitution said vampire groups have been around for years, with a recent academic study of the phenomenon indicating most self-styled vampires blend in with everyday people in appearance and behavior ... though some vampires reportedly wear fake fangs and "goth" fashions. Advertisement -0- Insomniac's sleep invention goes public OXFORD, England, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A British woman said the device she created to help her battle insomnia as a student is available online for $210. Kate Evans, 25, said she designed the Light Sleeper while suffering from insomnia during her time as a product design student at the University of Central Lancashire and involves a blue light that moves across the bedroom ceiling, The Mirror reported. "It moves your eyes along a line, relaxing your brain," Evans said. "This helps you drift off. Reading a book can make you more alert but this makes you switch off. It's the first device that offers a simple, drug free and natural way of falling asleep for those who find it hard." Evans, who works as a design director for firm Quincom in Oxford, said the company has been receiving large numbers of orders for the product from Japan. The inventor said her product can currently be purchased from lightsleeper.co.uk and will soon also be available from Boots.com. -0- Explorers seeking South Pole whiskey BRISBANE, Australia, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- The head of a New Zealand expedition said his team is attempting to retrieve whiskey that explorer Ernest Shackleton took with him on his South Pole expedition. Advertisement Expedition leader Al Fastier said crates containing the whiskey were abandoned by the British explorer during his failed 1909 journey and are currently frozen in ice in Antarctica, The (Brisbane, Australia) Courier Mail reported. Fastier said his expedition team will use special drills to gain access to the trapped crates and he hopes to procure a bottle of the McKinlay and Co. whiskey. Even if the expedition is successful, Fastier said he has no intention of drinking what he might recover. "It's better to imagine it than to taste it. That way it keeps its mystery," he said. The Courier Mail said Whyte & Mackay, the company that owned the now-defunct McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the whiskey so it could attempt to replicate it.
