Dietrich lives!

The Mandarin lives in Southern California, and earlier this year our local papers (and perhaps yours, too) were full of the story about a Swedish millionaire who totalled his $1,000,000 Ferrari Enzo going 162 mph while racing one night on the Pacific Coast Highway ("PCH") in Malibu. Police found the Swedish millionaire sitting in the passenger seat of what was left of his car. Even though he had a bloody nose and was in the passenger seat, only the driver's airbag had blood on it. Even so, the Swedish millionaire said he had not been driving, it was his friend "Dietrich" who had crashed the car, and then ran off into the hills above PCH.

Well, Dietrich was never found, and it turned out that the Swedish millionaire was really an ex-millionaire who had been some kind of con man, and even the Enzo was due for repossession because he had fallen behind on the payments on it and another exotic car. Now, he is going to jail for embezzlement.

But, imagine the Mandarin's surprise to read today of recent events in Australia that have "Dietrich" written all over them:

Police in Sydney said 240 people were under investigation over [a] speeding scam, where hundreds of motorists blamed either the same dead man, or a person living in another state, for driving their cars at the time of the speeding offences.

Come to think of it, when the Mandarin got that ticket a few years ago, wasn't that the day some Australian bloke named Dietrich borrowed the Mandarin's trusty Saab?