One of Norway’s most famous scammers is back after nine years in American prisons

Last updated 36 minutes ago

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It started at McDonalds.

At one of the restaurant’s tables at Ski shopping center, 20 minutes outside Oslo, sat Waleed Ahmed and a friend one day in 2009. The two teenagers scribbled down an idea on a napkin: An Iphone cover that could charge the phone with solar cells.

At least that was the story Ahmed himself told.

Later, his story – about the success and the millions and the fraud and the prison sentence in the USA – was to be told in countless newspaper articles, a feature on CNN, a radio documentary on NRK. Last year came the documentary and an eight-episode podcast.

In 2015, I wrote about Ahmed’s scam story in A-magazine. Afterwards we kept in touch. Through the prison’s knotty messaging system, he wrote messages, often optimistic. A book deal was signed! The documentary was on its way!

In 2018, he wrote: “Maybe it will be a Hollywood Film later, but it will be a secret 🙂 Anyway, I have less than 4 years before I come home to Norway.”

When the podcast came out last fall, just a few months before its release, Ahmed promoted it on Instagram and sent me a message on Messenger. He promised that A-magazine would get the first interview when he returned to Norway.

Then it became quiet. And you can hardly whine when Norway’s most famous scammers break a deal.

But in April, a text message came from a Norwegian issue.

He was back, he wrote.

‘Let’s meet on Thursday 1330 in Ski? Coffee on you? Haha 🙂 »

If it’s not true that Waleed Ahmed rabbled down a brilliant idea at McDonalds in Ski in 2007, then at least this is certain: 15 years later, on a Thursday in April at 13:40, he comes tumbling through the entrance to the same restaurant.