Originally published at Customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday, jury selection began in the trial of the now infamous Mary Winkler, the young minister’s wife accused of shooting her husband to death in their parsonage.
According to her lawyers, the couple were arguing over money after having gotten caught up in the Nigerian email scam, also known as the 419 Fraud.
So she killed him, but it wasn’t her fault.
It was the spammers.
Right.
Since when did stupidity become a defense, and, yes, anyone who gets “caught up” in one of these has failed to use their God-given grayware.
When did stupidity and greed become a defense?
Does that mean that I can go off, so something amazingly idiotic, then commit a crime like murder, and then use the original stupid act as my defense?
And let’s discuss the 419 Fraud in and of itself.
It’s not like this kind of thing is new.
It’s been going on since the 1920’s, but back then it was the Spanish Prisoner scam.
The Nigerians picked it up in the 70’s, and since then have turned it into a technological wonder.
But do people actually have to be instructed not to just fork over their life’s savings just because someone says they’ll give you lots of money in return?
I’ve gotten tons of emails like this, and I have yet to be tempted to just hand over my banking information.
Sure.
I’d love a ton of money.
It would make life easy for a while.
But I’m not gullible enough to think that some anonymous twit who comes begging for my information is going to give me any, and noone else should be either.
And how does murdering anyone solve the problem?
It’s not going to bring the money back, and the woman’s likely going to spend a lot of time in prison for this, away from her kids.
Oh well, I suppose if she’s convicted, she’ll have a lot of time to repent for her crime.

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