A middle-aged woman came to see me, absolutely depressed. Her mother is currently 79 years old. In the past, he was a teacher of Russian language and literature at school, then a successful tutor, beloved by his students. By nature, my mother was an energetic and independent woman, she lived separately from her children, in a good apartment, took diligent care of herself, which allowed her to look very good at her age. But, at some time, her daughter began to notice strange things. A large number of trinkets, pots, handkerchiefs, etc. began to appear in the house. Mom somehow stopped taking care of herself as before; she began to worry about tutoring only from the standpoint of getting more money, although before she simply “reveled” in her favorite work. Shopping began to reach terrifying proportions, the apartment was filled with completely unnecessary things. And the refrigerator was simply empty. The question arose: “Mom, where is all this from?” To which the mother told her daughter her great secret that she would soon become a big millionaire, and showed her a bunch of letters where it was written in bright red capital letters: “Congratulations! You are the only winner of three million rubles!” The daughter, naturally, became interested in why such generosity. And then she begins to study all the letters that it turns out have been coming for five (!) years! And she understands that everything her mother earned for tutoring children was her entire pension, and since she was a labor veteran, the pension was quite decent, she sent it there, to a company called “Our House”. And every month they wrote to her, “Your winnings are waiting for you, you just need to take the last step, choose from the catalog everything you want, but not less than the amount of 3 thousand rubles.” And she chose and sent, and every month she waited for these money with a sinking heart, and no conversations of children and grandchildren had any effect. Every month the date was determined when these “people” would arrive and present her with the long-awaited prize. She put on the most beautiful dress, bought a cake and waited patiently. I listened to this story and thought why an intelligent person, a TEACHER of children, could fall for the scammers! But these are people of the old school who lived under the USSR, they have no idea HOW you can deceive people on such a scale. I saw these chain letters, the thing is that on the other side of the brochures in small print it is written - “for advertising purposes.” That is, this is not any document. Then, I went further and found out that the tradition of extorting money from citizens by mail came to us from the West. In the United States, postal fraud is considered one of the most common crimes; according to various experts, the total turnover of postal scammers in Russia is already about 2.4 billion rubles per year. Judging by the techniques the “mail pirates” use, they are quite good experts in psychology. Emphasizing the selectivity of the addressee, interest in his needs, respect for him, they play on human feelings. But where is that line of humanity that will not allow offending the little ones, laughing at the sick and mocking the elderly. For those people who enrich themselves at the expense of meager pensions for elderly people, do they have their own parents? and who raised them and when? It’s clear that it’s simply ridiculous to talk about conscience here, conscience has a share, a share of the money that flows from all over our country from old and sick people. Let’s visit our elderly parents more often!