NHRA News: Nigerian business proposal stokes Funny Car dreams (4/1/2004)

Nigerian business proposal stokes Funny Car dreams

By Phil Indablank, Assimilated Press
4/1/2004

"This is almost too good to be true!"
– Tommy Phillips

A drag racing fan from Bangor, Maine, hopes soon to realize his lifelong dream of fielding a Funny Car as soon as he completes a pending email business arrangement with a Nigerian official.

Tommy Phillips, an unemployed 23-year-old former dishwasher, recently struck up negotiations with Dr. Clement Okon, a Top Official of the Nigerian Federal Government Contract Review Panel, who contacted Phillips via personal email to express to an interest in the importation of goods into his country with funds which are presently trapped in Nigeria.

"This is a dream come true," said an astonished Phillips. "I think that Dr. Okon and his friends must have been following by blog where I have written – in great detail, I might add – about my burning desire to drive a nitro Funny Car. Why else would they contact me with this urgent and confidential business proposal?"

Phillips outlined the ambitious business plan in which Nigerian officials will place into his bank account $21,320,000, of which he will get one third – "still way more than enough for a top-notch Funny Car team," Phillips shrewdly noted – to help them with their problem.

"It's been pretty smooth so far, with the expected little problems of any deal of this size," Phillips recounted. "I gave them my banking information but at first there wasn't enough money in my account to make me look like a legitimate businessman, so I had to, as we say in the business world, 'liquidate some assets' to get some more buckaroos in there."

Phillips sold his '66 Chevy Biscayne to his best friend, Doug Dickinson, auctioned off his complete mint '69 Mets baseball card collection on eBay, and pawned a "really expensive-looking" ring that his parents gave him upon graduation from Bangor High School five years ago. To further legitimize the size of his "corporation," Phillips also offered the banking information from his parents' well-stocked account, which he masterfully passed off to the unknowing Nigerians as his "mad money" account.

The facts that the funds have not yet made their way into his account has not deterred Phillips from racing along with his plans.

"I've already contacted Austin Coil about becoming my crew chief, and he gave me the cold shoulder, which I totally expected," Phillips said. "Austin's a smart businessman like me, and I'm sure he'll change his tune when I throw him some real greenbacks.

"I've already gotten my good friend, Troy Shoup, to pen out a rendering for me," he added." He's done some really cool superhero and anime before, and he drew up a really sweet rendering of the Phillips & Okon Monte Carlo. It's even got the Nigerian and American flags on it. Man, I can't wait. This is almost too good to be true!"

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