Just the Ticket for Tricky Truckers

November 10, 2008 · Filed Under Italian news · Comment 

Travelling on Italy’s autostrade, or motorways, can be quite an expensive business, for example for truck drivers the cost from northern Italy to to  costs around 70 Euros, but in another classic Italian scam, budget tickets were made available.

Yesterday, Sunday morning, just over 250 heavy goods vehicles or TIRs as they are known here, were impounded by police after the great Italian autostrada ticket fiddle came to light.

A section of Italy’s most in the news at the moment mafia , the camorra, were apparently behind this scam. Read more

Tags: , , , ,

The Crooked Tower of Pisa?

September 18, 2008 · Filed Under Italy · Comment 

Yet another unfortunate driver has found my recent post on how to view Pisa traffic violation photos useful, alas.

Having been accused a while back of being part of a scam network, I too have been wondering whether the Pisa limited traffic zone fines are part of a scam.  No, surely not, you may retort.

Well, it has to be said that Italians are dab hands at organising large scale scams, fiddles or whatever you would like to call them.  Indeed, there is more than a little evidence of this particular Italian skill. Read more

Tags: , ,

A winning streak

June 26, 2007 · Filed Under Technology and Gadgets · Comment 

According to many nice men with African sounding names who represent various well know companies and lotteries, I have several million pounds coming my way. All I have to do is send them a few personal details, a sample of my DNA and all my PIN numbers and my life will become worry free. Boy, am I tempted. Not.

Yes, the number of 419 scam emails dropping into my mail box has tripled recently. Most are caught as spam, but one or two get through the net and some are almost written well enough to be convincing. Just as well that I know English better than most of these types, but I pity those with less knowledge of the English language. I bet many non-mother tongue English speakers end up being caught in the traps of these dubious types.

Life on the dark side of the WWW. Not nice, and increasing. Potentially the rewards of cyber crime are galactic and I wonder just how many have been tempted onto the murky side of something which can provide so many people with so much.

As is often the case, the few will ruin things for the majority, and the freedom which the WWW enjoys at present is likely to be all but eliminated in the future. But I hope not.

Tags: , ,

supernal-hilarious