As long as there are suckers!

American Greed Season 4 (2010)

After immersing myself in murders and death with Hitchcock and Tarantino, I decided to dwell on another of man's favourite desires—greed. I managed to watch the whole fourth season, 12 episodes of American Greed.

It is the same story again and again. As long as there are suckers, they will always be cheaters. This is just one season I watched; imagine what will be shown in the 8 seasons! Looks like the whole of America is sprawling with cheats and conmen. Everywhere you see, people are so gullible. It is always the same modus operandi, the end point is always money.

The gullible victims are not just mere laymen. In one episode, we even see Bill Clinton introducing a so-called philanthropist, Raffaello Follieri, who had pledged half a million dollars for a vaccination project in South America. Follieri even hooked up with actress Anne Hathaway. He turned out to be a fraud and a dropout from Italy who failed in many business ventures till he finally used his alleged Vatican connections to buy abandoned churches for a song in the US.

Then there was a story of 2 ladies who pick up homeless men in different parts of the country, buy insurance policies and eventually kill them off to collect their insurance money. A pair of sisters supplying nuts and bolts to the Army started to fleece the US Armed Forces of millions of dollars when they realised a loophole in postage charges in the system. A devout Jew who had a passion for women and gambling is also shown to cheat people of their hard-earned money. Members of the medical and pharmaceutical industries were no angels either. A dermatologist convinced people to undergo unnecessary treatment, and Pfizer is shown to be involved in unethical practices of giving loads of goodies to doctors to promote Bextra, a painkiller.

Men will never learn. These types of cheats and cheating are bound to continue despite advancements in security features and awareness of the general public.

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