One spokesman from a leading Pro Stock team, said, "The guy talked such a good line, I thought I'd give him a try. His approach is 'I have the inside with these people.' He waves that carrot out there in front of you. Everything's always 'Next week!' with him. I just told him, 'When the money's on the way, call me.' The phone's been pretty silent lately."

He said his policy is investing in the team "based on what we have and not what we think we might have." Still, he said goodbye to his $3,000 halfway through the season and said he hasn't seen a dime of the promised sponsor money. "You never know, but I doubt it," he said. "The guy's one heck of a con man."

A Pro Stock owner/driver from another team told a similar story: "I thought he was for real and that he could help me close a deal I was working on. It turns out I had a proposal that I had prepared stolen by the guy ... and he even used me as a reference! Unbelievable!"

While conceding he and his fellow racers "should've checked his references," this owner/driver said Blackford did not ask for an exorbitant amount of money. However, after sharing his experience with colleagues, he concluded that "it's the same attack, the same verbiage in almost every case."

Blackford's alleged web started to unravel at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis when, as is often the case in the pits, drivers and crew members compare notes. Two soon discovered that they were both planning big roll-outs from a major telecommunications company that, according to Blackford, was "going to close before the last Chicago race" only four weeks away.

Imagine the drivers' surprise that they were both working with the same motorsports "agent" and that they were waiting for the exact same deal to close!

As the weeks passed and deadline after deadline expired, drivers began more diligent searching into the background of the elusive mystery man.

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During the initial proposal stages of his story, Blackford stated that he had helped acquire a "full sponsorship" of a car in the mid-1980s by Arizona-based Peter Piper Pizza. A telephone call to Peter Piper Pizza corporate headquarters indicated that a Paul Blackford was an agent who got a sponsorship for a car. But the total deal was, according to Don Pijut, director of field services marketing, a "$5,000 one-time deal . . . and they never even got the car down the track."

Further research into the elusive man's background reveals that he is the owner of Blackford Investigations in Newport Beach, Calif., doing business since 1999 as self-described "certified fraud investigators." Also uncovered are several court cases in which Blackford has been involved in lawsuits. They are legal-malpractice and breach-of-contract cases, some involving a former partner, an attorney.

Cary Menard, NHRA Vice-President of Technical Administration and Legal Affairs, said, "We really can't go after him, because he hasn't defrauded us directly . . . although we do want to keep alerted of his actions and try to keep our drivers from losing money. It just wouldn't look good if we were suing people who bring sponsors into our sport."

As far as anyone can ascertain, Blackford never has brought a sustained sponsorship into NHRA drag racing. Furthermore, as yet another Pro Stock driver remarked, teams are vulnerable to sometimes-shady persons peddling sponsorship-procurement expertise because of NHRA's lack of involvement in that area, along with its habit of making the cars, rather than the drivers, the stars. In contrast, NASCAR has attracted corporate involvement by marketing the personalities of its drivers.