Great Oil Sniffer Hoax

Rarity: Common

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What Wikipedia says

The Great Oil Sniffer Hoax was a 1979 scandal involving French oil company Elf Aquitaine. The company spent millions of dollars developing a new gravity wave-based oil detection system, which was later revealed to be a scam. Elf lost over $150 million in the hoax.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article “Great Oil Sniffer Hoax”, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Read the article on Wikipedia

Image: Cour des Comptes / French gouvernment, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.