And now we have five New Zealand women conned into forwarding to Ghana stolen goods, believing they were for a man they had met on an online dating site for Christians. None of them was aware the goods had been bought with stolen credit cards and the police are satisfied the women were duped.
The man -- if indeed there was a man, as police believe it was a criminal ring -- would spend weeks online chatting with the women.
He told them the goods were for his business in Germany and that it was cheaper to get them sent through Ghana, or that he was a missionary heading to Africa and needed them for his work there.
He would then forward a shipping document so the women weren't out of pocket. After the women dispatched the items, they never heard from him again.
The criminals who prey on the lonely and the vulnerable are particularly loathsome.
I know that ultimately it's the responsibility of people to protect themselves, but it's the lowest of the low to entrap people who are so hungry for love they'll cede every scrap of common sense that they possess.
What on earth is in the water in Wellington? So many people who take up a position of responsibility in the Government or civil service seem to be afflicted with amnesia.
John Banks couldn't remember a helicopter ride to Coatesville and a lunch with Dotcom. John Key said in response to a question in the House that he'd never had conversations with the blogger Whaleoil, and later had to make a clarification in Parliament that, oh, yes, in fact he had exchanged texts with the blogger.
And now Iain Rennie, the State Services Commissioner who was responsible for the debacle that was Roger Sutton's resignation, has suffered brain fade.
Rennie organised the press conference that allowed the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority head to spin his own reasons for leaving and had his own take on the sexual harassment complaints that were the catalyst for the resignation. Despite the fact that the complainant and Sutton had been bound by confidentiality agreements, Rennie sat there like a spectator at the circus, even though he was supposed to be running the show.
That was bad enough but some weeks later he told reporters he had thought long and hard about resigning over the debacle. He had decided to continue with the job, he said, after discussions with ministers. Well, actually, he hadn't. Not his minister, Paula Bennett. And not the top minister, Prime Minister John Key.
Perhaps he just thought he had talked to them. I know how that can happen. I once told the journos in the newsroom that when I had talked to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, he had told me -- well, I forget what he told me. I just became aware of the journos sitting staring at me open-mouthed.
"How did you come to be doing that?" asked one of them. I looked at her. "What did I just say?" I asked. "That you were talking to Colin Powell," she replied. "Ah," I said. "No. That's wrong. What I meant was when I was listening to Colin Powell on CNN."
So I get it. You can be thinking so hard about something -- like US foreign policy, like your resignation from your job -- that you just think you've spoken to the people in power. Or perhaps Rennie meant he has spoken to ministers who were men of the cloth, for advice and guidance as to whether to continue in his job. Whatever.
Surely a man who's earning more than $600,000 of taxpayer money would have a better grasp of how to deal with high-level resignations and whether the conversations he had with the minister in charge of his department were real, or in his head.
•Kerre McIvor is on Newstalk ZB, Monday to Thursday, 8pm-midnight
