Lecturer Conned

I'm not sure what to think of the quality of lecturers in our public universities when you read news reports like this:

A senior university lecturer was cheated of RM600,000 by a syndicate who duped her into believing that they had inherited millions of dollars belonging to an African leader who had died recently.

I would have thought that these types of con will typically victimise those who aren't particularly intelligent. Even if the lecturer couldn't smell the well worked con, surely, she should have read about plenty of silly sob stories of individuals being suckered by the standard highly-placed-official-died routine!

The lecturer agreed to fork out RM100,000 and handed over the money to one of the syndicate members in Kuala Lumpur to “fulfil one of the conditions”. These included “donations” to charities in Africa and also for services rendered.

The lecturer was also asked to pay for a chemical that would purportedly clean the money of black ink, which was used to discolour the cash to make them easier to smuggle into the country. The lecturer borrowed RM500,000 from her friend, who mortgaged his house to secure a bank loan.

I'm more concerned that a "senior" lecturer "educating" our university students than the fact that she lost RM600,000. The "loss" impact on our students could be much higher than that!!