Outside Bristol Zoo there is a carpark for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were £1.40 for cars, and £7 for buses.
Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day off work, this attendant just didn’t show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.

The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo’s own responsibility. The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.

The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy … is a man who’d apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own, and then, had simply begun to show up every day, to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about £560 per day — for 25 years.

Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over 7 million pounds …. and no one even knows his name.

Now, part of me enjoys the audacity of this long term scam! I KNOW the guy was naughty, but boy was he painstakingly careful and hard-working too!
This man, whoever he is, took what was not rightfully his year in, year out, until he amassed huge wealth and power.
The enemy is just the same. He gets into our world in disguise. We don’t bat an eyelid because we aren’t on the look out for his schemes.

I had a wake up call to one such scam in my life a few days ago. More on this tomorrow.

But, just quickly, have you checked who you are paying your dues to recently?
There’s no point paying and displaying for the wrong purse. Be on your guard. The enemy may be being so bold as to wear a ‘high-viz’ jacket so you just think he’s meant to be there!!