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How Romanian Fortune Tellers Used Google To Fleece Victims
Hentes writes "The internet has made many things easier, but unfortunately this also includes crime: it seems that nowadays not even people wanting to know their future are safe from fraud. Two fortune tellers are being investigated, after the Romanian police uncovered that they have utilized some extraordinary help in their clairvoyant acts. The pair used information collected from internet search and social networks to gain the trust of their customers, claiming that they could see their personal data through their crystal ball. In some cases, they also used high-tech surveillance techniques such as hidden cameras and phone tapping. But they didn't stop at merely spying on their victims: their most bizarre case involved a scuba diver dressed as a monster." Nice to know that internet-based fraud isn't limited to motivational speakers with real-estate seminars and other get-rich-quick flim-flam.
"it seems that nowadays not even people wanting to know their future are safe from fraud"
If you pay someone money and expect them to tell your future, you will never be safe from fraud. In fact, as your palm reading crystal adviser, I sense...fraud...in your future.
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Really it's just an update of what has been going on since at least the mid 1800s. Back then they would question friends and relatives and check newspapers and birth records. Even the diver isn't all that different from having some one dress up as a ghost or having a veil on a string dance around. People believe even lame gags because they want to believe. The internet like with most things just makes it quicker and easier.
And they would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for those darn meddling kids!
after first thinking the article was about Romulan fortune tellers.
Olga sits at her desk with her clients holding hand in a circle around her Ipad ...the candle flickers....One of the clients desperately wants to speak to Steve about why suddenly his Mac Book Pro is vulnerable to the "curse of the Open Windows"
Olga says she senses an evil presence in the room and that Steve is telling her that there is something very wrong with her clients Mac Book Pro and that it will only be free from evil when he removes boot camp and returns to the pure essence of Apple!
Olga takes her 200 dollar malware removal fee, 20% of which is paid to Symantec for setting her up in business.
I see many scenes like this happening to Mac users in the future.
... because the fortune teller trade has always before been a bastion of honesty and integrity, and has never been the butt of scurrilous rumors of fraud.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Every and all fortune teller is committing fraud - these were just higher-tech than the rest.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
There us no need to separate Superstition and religion, they are the same thing.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I'm an engineer and been atheist my whole life, so I don't believe in horoscopes/crystals/palm reading/etc... However, I've found that I immensely enjoy occasional tarot sessions. I don't believe any of that outside those sessions but every once in a while, it's nice to meet someone more spiritual than I am, light a few candles, smoke a bit of tobacco from a bong, engage in the whole tarot ritual (sliding fingers on the deck, etc.), have her read the cards for me and then reflect on how to interpret that all based on my history and expectations for the future.
It's almost therapeutic to completely suspend your disbelief every once in a while and get in touch with the spiritual side (I think that there is a certain mental state that every human - no matter how skeptic, etc. - can achieve if they want to... and it's pretty pleasant, really). As long as you keep it at that and don't ever start to think that you could actually make important decisions based on all that, it's pretty much the most harmless source of enjoyment that there is.
So, if people want that and what they get is that someone wiretaps their phones, installs hidden cameras to their apartment, etc... it's not okay to say "Well, what did they expect? Of course they're going to get scammed!"
Ridiculous.
I mean, you don't get a tax exemption for always putting your left shoe on first, do you?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money". Apparently, the Romanian scammer fortune-tellers agree.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
No they are not. A religion is an organisation based on superstition. Saying they are the same thing is like saying that corporations and capitalism are the same thing.
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Any equipment of a better quality than what the government is using. In Romania, that's probably a satchel VHS camera with a stage microphone taped to the window.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
"Well ... suckers are _still_ falling into the Nigerian money transfer scam, don't they?"
Not to mention talking snakes, virgin mothers and bearded men in the sky.
although i live in austria, i've never heard of the "austrian times" (and it's really not that big a country). also, the story lacks information about where this has happened (except that the fortune tellers are romanian), and i would't be the least bit surprised if the pictures from the two women were random stock photos. i'd take this story with at least a grain of salt...