Stealing our humanity.

Scams that prey on our humanity.
Destroy our humanity.

A month ago, while I was away on business, I got a call from my wife saying that some woman from a charity had tried to reach me. I told her I didn't remember having dealt with them but implied that it's possible I might have given them something in the past.

This is how I remembered this. She heard me say that I supported the cause in the past, so that it aught to be above board.

This Friday I found her all emotional over  a call she had just  received from this same charity; the  woman was, this time, looking for money to bury an aids orphan. It was a real tragic case of another little child that she, the woman had adopted that had died in her arms.
My wife was supportive and emotionally connected to this and again, she sent money.

Yesterday evening, I walked in on a tragic scene. My wife was on the phone with this woman from this charity, and they were crying, again.

Seems that some new tragedy had struck and she needed support. When the call was over my wife frantically started telling me that the woman's husband was hijacked and killed. And they needed money to have the burial society deal with the body. She was all torn up over the call. I tried to calm her down and told her that this story, while being possible in this crazy country, appeared a little far fetched. A little implausible.

We decided to call around first to find out if anyone had heard about such an incident.
Later that evening my son in law called the actual  burial society and found that they were well aware of this "old scam" and were surprised that it was still generating money. They even knew that the FNB account was in the name of an "Trustee F Abrahams".
acc no 62473919078
branch code254005
ref 32948

So I blocked the callers number on my wife's phone and tried to console her.
She wasn't so much angry as she was disappointed in the inhumanity of somebody lying about having their husband killed to extract money.
We decided to just drop the matter and put it behind us.
I tried to cheer her up by telling her that the man they were grieving, had come back to life and surely that was cause to celebrate.
She wasn't amused.

This incident had hurt her deeply.

Next morning the woman called again from a blocked number and my wife told her the game was up.

Every time something like this happens, we all die a little. And in the end we will have lost the emphaty that makes us human.

Why is this not clear to everyone.