Just for your entertainment.
Last night I watched on TV the story of an incredible Italian con artist, just sentenced 6 years of prison. He was the son of a numerous family, they were poor because nobody worked. At 15 he began saying that he had apparitions of the Virgin Mary and for years he gathered a community of people who really believed him. They met every day for prayers in an abandoned little church and once a week he had these "visions", where the Virgin gave him messages for the world. At the end of these visions he even had blood on his forehead and palms, like Christ. He was very venerated and, as he was very poor, people began giving him money, food, goods, and more money. Well, not directly to him, but to his mother and sisters, who were always present.
He told them he had devoted his entire life to love and sacrifice, renouncing the world for the good of humankind.
He convinved desperate people that he could cure cancer, severe ailments, making them having babies. Then he told the richer ones that he wanted to erect some crosses to stop wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, you name it and that he was helping orphans. For all this he needed money and he was so clever that many gave it to him. Then, if somebody began having doubts about these practices, he threaten them, or told their family they were evil and should be rejected. He even convinced a joung girl he was using for his criminal deeds (he never of course saw the Virgin nor the blood was his blood) to have an abortion as her child was a Down. And she believed him!
Some of them sold their propeties, gave him all their their savings and renounced to cars, holidays and their family. When he got enough - they say about 4 millions euros, he told them he won't keep the daily gatherings in the church anymore as he needed a time wher he had to meditate. Actually he went on scamming only very rich people in private meetings in their houses and there he bled them white.
Then he disappeared. He emerged after some months.... as a woman! He had undergo a change of sex I think in Thailand, several plastic surgeries, led the life of a milionaire, spending like mad in luxury resorts, luxury dresses and accessories, cruises, and end up marrying one of his accomplices.
But his/her career as a con artist wasn't finished, because he/she still was able to grab tons of money from rich idiots who didn't believe he was just a scammer and not the mystic they wanted to believe.
He managed to get something like 2 milions from a couple of enterpreneurs because told them he wanted to produce and play in a film about his life as a mystic. And they gave it to him/her. It was instead o sort of soft porn with her/him as the main character.
In the meantime though, the majority of the people he had scammed got together and went to the police. So now he has been sentenced, still keeps saying that he never asked for anything, they gave their money freely and he never apologized for the people and families he has devastated, although some of them even attempted suicide. The story is much more complicated than what I have said, because the scams, the lack of morals, the total lack of interest for the consequences on his victims' lives his evil was producing are endless.
They thought they were paying in order to go to Heaven, to be cured, to save children, and instead they were paying for his change of sex, plastic surgery, dirty movies and a life of luxury they couldn't afford.
Which is the moral of this amazing story? That sooner or later, even the dumbest and most idiotic of scammed people will open their eyes and get very, very angry at seeing how they have been fooled and used. Just give them time.