Witchcraft Fraud

The fact that this story about witchcraft arrives less than a week before Hallowe’en is bound to result in lots of jokes, but fraud is no laughing matter.

Question for discussion: other than the dollar figures in this story, how is selling witchcraft different, ethically, from selling homeopathy? In both cases, there are believers. And in both cases, science tells us with great confidence that the product does not work and cannot work.

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LINK: York police charge Toronto woman with witchcraft and fraud in $600,000 ‘evil spirit’ scam (by Marjan Asadullah for the Toronto Star)

…police have charged a Toronto woman with witchcraft and fraud for allegedly costing one of her victims $600,000 in an “evil spirit blessing scam.”

The investigations started in November 2017 when a 67-year-old man reported a financial abuse incident, York police said in a Thursday news release. Investigators learned that the victim had met a psychic using the name “Evanna” approximately four years earlier.

The woman, police said, had convinced the victim that in order to get rid of “evil spirits” in his home, he should sell his house and transfer the money into her account where she would hold it until the spirits left.

According to police, the suspect did not return the money and later told the victim she needed an additional $6,000, which she said she would burn to ward off spirits. The victim sold his car and used his credit card and other forms of payments to meet several other financial demands, police said….

What do you think?

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