As I woke up for school one day last week and turned on the TV, news anchors continued to pour out new facts, the latest airline debt figure, and their own commentary on the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. When the volcano erupted on Wednesday, April 14, a large plume of ash was blown into the air cancelling thousands of flights and causing airlines to lose over $200 million a day while ash drifted over the northern European skies.
It’s amazing to think how, in our high-tech world, a natural phenomenon such as a volcanic eruption, where no casualties or direct devastation occurred, can throw a part of the world into havoc. This eruption is just one of many recent windows that have been set up by Mother Nature for these scammers to benefit from. Others include the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and China, and Thailand’s Tsunami. But isn’t it the time that we, as neighbors, are supposed to cooperate and help as much as we can? Apparently not all of us think so. In the midst of this turmoil, some people looked at it as a window of cruel opportunity.
As frustrated travelers waited hopelessly in airports, airlines scampered to reschedule flights, and millions of people watched the surreal events unfold on the news, pathetic con artists took full advantage to gain all the cash they could bargain from innocent people. What happens in this situation is that these con artists find out a particular person’s location (a young man stuck in a London airport, for example) and retrieve the phone number or e-mail address of a vulnerable and innocent relative (mainly grandparents or aunts and uncles). They then pose as the stuck family member asking the relative for a large amount of cash after explaining a false reason of why “they” need cash in a hurry.
In reality, they are probably miserable people too lazy to work for their own money. And in an urgent situation, most family members would not hesitate to wire the money to help out their relative. I was stunned that people would dip this low for their own benefit. It’s a win situation for the scammer, but a lose-lose for the victims. Not only are they involved in or hurt by the disaster that just happened, they are out a few hundred or thousand dollars that they will most likely never see again.
So, props to the few human beings who never cease to amaze me with their constant greed and selfishness. No matter what Mother Nature may have in store for us, a few of us always seem to feel the need to outdo her. Keep up the good work! I think we’ll really grow from our experiences.
