OUTLANDISH

DEFINITION:
Something bizarre or ridiculously out-of-the-ordinary. Very odd, strange, or peculiar; fantastic.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
The little-told story about the BART seat-slashing gang that was part of an upholstery racket By Dianne de Guzman, SFGATE Updated 6:29 pm PDT, Friday, October 18, 2019 8 FILE - Passengers on the relatively new train system peer out the windows, in this photo taken Sept. 12, 1972. The interior photo shows the look of the earlier BART trains, including a view of the seats that were later part of a criminal conspiracy in 1981. Photo: Barney Peterson, The Chronicle Photo: Barney Peterson, The Chronicle Image 1 of 25 FILE - Passengers on the relatively new train system peer out the windows, in this photo taken Sept. 12, 1972. The interior photo shows the look of the earlier BART trains, including a view of the seats that ... more The BART scheme started to unravel after one man tried to make a deal with police. Freshly arrested, the man decided to bargain using an interesting, unknown bit of information. He told police there was a racket being carried out on BART trains, involving paid-for vandalism of the transit system's seats. "He said, 'I’ll tell you what, there’s this little scam going on over here that I know about, because I was one of the guys that they hired ... they’d pay us, like, $2 a slash, or $3 a slash,’ something like that," longtime BART spokesman and author Michael Healy recalled. It was the early '80s at the time, and the young transit system was just under 10 years old. :: At first, the question about the scam, as it was posed to Healy earlier this month, seemed too outlandish to be true.
►The San Francisco Chronicle, 10/21/2019