If you ever doubt the ingenious evil of man, here is a true story of how men used virtual cows to create real poop to deal with. Far, far away, in a foreign land called Romania, eight online “farmers” applied for, and received, government subsidies of about $150 per virtual cow, for almost two thousand cows. Three years later, the real government finally clued in, and stopped the payments for their make-believe livestock. Government subsidies for farmers are certainly not uncommon, but there is a major problem with this story’s livestock, because the bogus bovines were virtual cows, inspired by the online video game, FarmVille.
Apparently, the Romanian government got a little cranky about the prank, and pulled the plug on payments after learning the cows weren’t being milked, they were being used to milk the government. But, in a tactical shift from defense to offense, the keyboard country cooperative did something unexpected, they sued the Romanian government! The group, who had received a total of more than $650,000 in subsidies over the course of three years, apparently felt they had done nothing wrong, and were in fact the injured parties by the government’s action.
According to Metro UK, the group claims that they were not informed the farms had to be real when they applied, and are taking their case to court. It looks to us that the only bright spot in this tale of dumb and dumber, is that Romanian taxpayers are darn lucky that the phony farmers did not invite all of their Facebook friends to share in on the fun.
