Everybody remembers Y2K, right? For a refresher, Y2K is short for "The year 2000," and it refers to events related to the computer formatting and storage of calendar data for dates beginning in the year 2000.

One Sunday morning in the months leading up to this "prophesied" event(more on this in a minute), my grandmother, now deceased, was attending the church that she had attended for years with her late husband from her second marriage after my grandfather passed away in '80.

When the services ended that morning, my grandmother was doing her usual mingling with those in her congregation, when a smiling elderly gentleman whom she did not recognize approach her and introduced himself. *Robin Young was his name and he was new to the church, hence, her not recognizing him. It was a very small church, after all, so she knew everybody.

*the real names of the actual offenders will be used throughout, as all crimes listed herein are on public record.

After several minutes of idle chit-chat and exchanging stories about the Christian life, the subject of what Mr. Young did for a living came up, and as it turns out, he was an investor, among other things. Fast forward a bit, and this introductory encounter subsequently led to more encounters in the following weeks, and on one such encounter Y2K came up. And since Mr. Young had already gained the trust of my grandmother - and the sad truth of the matter is that the only thing that this required was him telling her that he was a Christian - she honored his request to pay a personal visit to her house so that he could talk more extensively about his faith and how said faith, his Christian faith, was intertwined with Y2K. (in hindsight, this was just an attempt on my grandmother's new friend's part to stay under the radar)

Well, lo and behold, Mr. Young had made his way into my grandmother's house and convinced her that this computer "glitch" was prophesied in the Bible and that anyone who had a savings or checking account needed to withdraw their money, otherwise, they could stand a chance of losing it all(you'll see the irony in a minute), the idea being that computers would crash and bank accounts would be frozen. Being the trusting women that my grandmother was - and if we're honest here, it was her "faith" that made her this way, even to her detriment - she eventually took  Mr. Young's "financial advice" and she withdrew all her savings, which included the money she inherited from her late second husband.

So, we're talking roughly 40k, all in cash and all in a safe in her bedroom. Cool, huh?

Once that my grandmother told the enthusiastic investor that she had followed his advice - and as it turns out, this investor was not acting alone, but in concert with 3 or 4 other scam artists in the South Florida area - he then moved in for the kill, so-to-speak, enticing her to invest in what she was told were secure, low risk, high yield investments. And remember, there was no reason to doubt this guy, because, in her own words, "He was a good Christian man."

To cut to the chase, these investments were not secure. In fact, what she actually invested in were viatical insurance policies, one of the biggest scams going. The good news, which was a day late and about forty grand short, was that the co-conspirators with whom Robin Young was in cahoots, got busted, and the ringleader, R. John Zavodny, along with co-conspirator, Peter G. Fager, did some prison time. Not enough, IMO, but some.

Reports say upwards of 4 million dollars was bilked from their mainly elderly victims, numbering approximately 55 people in total.

link: https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2008/06/16/daily40.html

R. John Zavodny top  Peter G. Fager bottom

So, what is the purpose of publishing all of this, one might ask? That answer is two-fold; that is, I'm being a voice for my grandmother who can no longer be her own voice. But I am also here to illuminate the thoroughly despicable fact that at least one of these charlatans used Christianity to gain the trust of his victims before preying on them. To me, that's one too many. While I cannot prove that Young's co-conspirators used this tactic to bilk other victims, I know via internet searches and the various people finder websites available to anyone with internet access that the co-conspirator's family members subscribe to the Christian faith.

What does this mean? It means that I'm able to peer into the lives of the blood relatives of the guys who made a cold, calculated decision to bilk people out of their life savings, as I watch in utter amazement as they talk about how great their "God" is. Mind you, this is the same "God" who, if he actually exists, sat there with arms folded while some conniving  ***holes conned my grandmother out her retirement savings. And in church, no less.

If this is not compelling evidence that there isn't any "God" overseeing anything, then the only other option is that this "God" is incompetent at best, a useless, immoral jerk-wad, at worst. Certainly not worthy of my worship or admiration.