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medea

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 4, 2002
2,517
1
Madison, Wi
Two Zimbabwean mortuary workers have been arrested on charges they rented out corpses to motorists to enable them to take advantage of special fuel preferences given to hearses.
Zimbabwe's state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Saturday that a mortician and an assistant at a public hospital were arrested on Thursday and would soon appear in court on charges of violating dead bodies.
The two are accused of running a racket under which they sold fake burial orders to motorists who then took the corpses and transported them to service stations.
That allowed them to jump long queues to fill their tanks.
After buying the fuel they returned the bodies in their coffins to the mortuary, the newspaper said.
Zimbabwe has suffered a serious fuel shortage since November when a barter deal with Libya for the supply of nearly 70 percent of its needs collapsed.

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/new...ff/story/0002/20030721/073426290.htm&sc=reodd

This is probably the oddest thing I've heard recently, but what I don't get is, do all of these guys drive hearse's anyways or what? I mean they weren't throwing the bodies into the back of their Escorts....
 
Wow, I feel sad.

I mean to rent out a dead person so you could ge gas, they are in dire need, someone send them gas, geez where are the monopolistic companies when you need them? (And this is the only time you would need them).

Makes me sad. :(
 
This is the kind of story that give morticians a bad name. The sad thing is than scams also occur in the US. This is definitely a new one. In the US it reusing caskets, selling body parts, selling items of value, or not cremating. I just can't imagine anyone that is will to desecrate the dead! :(
 
Yes, they would put a body in the back of a car or truck. They don't have special hearses just to carry bodies over there for every funeral.

It's a real mess in Zimbabwe. Used to be a thriving country, but Mugabe + AIDS = disaster.
 
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