Blay-Miezah: The World's First "419" Con Man?

This is a partial transcript of discussion on CBS Larry King Live.

KING: Our guests are Ed Bradley and Steve Kroft, both a part of this new book from 60 Minutes Classics, published by Simon & Schuster. "Con Men: Fascinating Profiles and Rogues from the files of the Most successful Broadcast in Television History."

And as I said, we'll be showing little clips from some of the cons and getting Ed and Steve to comment on them. We'll include your phone calls as well. Lots to cover. We'll be right back.

BRADLEY (voice-over): Before he agreed to sit on his tribal throne wit his scepter and talk with us, Blamesa (Blay-Miezah ) said he had to carry out an old tribal custom: to vow to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (on camera): Have you defrauded people?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have not.

BRADLEY: That Oman Gannafran (ph) is real?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is real. And they're in pain.

BRADLEY: It contains billions of dollars?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Correct.

BRADLEY: And these people will be paid.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will be paid. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). When I promise you that after giving me $100,000, I'll give you $1 million, I will never, never, never, never, disown it.

KING: We're back with Ed Bradley and Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes." That clip that we just saw with Dr. Blemisa (ph). He's one of the characters in "Con Men." Mr. Bradley is laughing.
What was his con? What was that all about?

BRADLEY: He's one of the guys who I said, he is the best I have ever met. I mean, he was so good that when I finished the interview, if I didn't have to live by the rules and guidelines at CBS News, I wanted to kick in some money to his fund.

KING: How did it work?

BRADLEY: He had a fund. He told this story, that he was either a cousin or nephew of the first prime minister of Ghana. And that they had taken all of this money from the cocoa profits and put it into gold. And when gold was at a time when gold was $32 an ounce. Then when gold went to a free market, the price just exploded. So that he had billions of dollars, $32 billion in his trust fund and when Kwame Nkrumah died he had the keys to the trust fund. So he would be the heir to it.

But it would cost him some money to unlock the fund. There were certain requirements he had to meet. And he needed money to pay off certain Ghana officials. For example, he needed a passport that was numbered 0013. But it would cost him $50,000 to get that passport. He talked someone into getting him -- to putting up the $50,000 by promising them a return on their investment of $1 million. And then he would come back in six months and he'd show them that passport.

You could see the guy counting the million dollars. And he would say well, we're almost there, but there's another complication. Because we need the approval of these tribal chieftains. He would say, Larry, I know you've put up $50,000 here. I don't want to ask you for more money, but maybe you have some friends, we're going to have to pay off five tribal chieftains, $50,000 each at a cost of $250,000. I know I said I'd give you $1 million. Now I will give you $3 million for each $50,000.

KING: What happened to him?

BRADLEY: People put up so much money. We showed that this guy had collected about $125 million from investors. And what happened to him is that eventually, he died. But to show you how strong the belief of these investors -- how strong their belief is, Blay-Miezah died eight, maybe nine years ago. His body was frozen and is still in Geneva where some of these investors are still trying to unlock the keys to that fund of Ghana fund.

KING: That's a great story.

BRADLEY: He was good. I mean, he's the best I have ever seen.

KING: We're hop-scotching a bit because we have various clips. This is all from the book "Con Men." We'll go back and for the from current events and the book. We'll Kroft clips as well.