Holy Moly! Let me finish.

What do Malta and Finland have in common apart from their apparent love of all things to do with the Eurovision Song Contest? Finland won with Lordi in 2006; Malta is still waiting for the ecstatic moment. Now don’t hold your breath on that one!

‘Not a lot’, to use Paul Daniels’ catchphrase. The hot rock versus the cold Peninsula are miles apart in different parts of Europe. One in the sunny Mediterranean, you know that little speck on the map underneath Sicily, the other bordering the chilly Baltic Sea neighbours with Sweden. Ok! Geography recap over; now let’s get down to business.

A somewhat disturbing connection has come to light. A Finnish teenager, from the land of the midnight sun, Aurora Borealis and Santa Claus, must have thought that all his Christmases had come at once when he made his discovery. So what was that then? He found a blip, a glitch, call it what you may, in one of the many online gaming outfits doing business in Malta.

Obviously this lad has techno gifted status but his future CV is now tarnished forever! And why? Because he siphoned off, over a relatively short period of time, a cool €252,000 from the unfortunate company.

Greed, bravado…whatever…must have got the better of him, as surely he must’ve realised the penny would drop and someone would notice his devilish scam. Did he think that they had all gone fishing or were having a long siesta? “Oh no, they weren’t” said in true Christmas panto style.

Of course, an eagle-eyed employee rumbled his illegal activity and set the snow bells ringing between Malta and Finland. Now, I’m sure we’ve all done something sneaky in our lifetime, like pocketing extra change from a distracted till girl in a supermarket, or nipped on a bus without paying, but this is in a different league…it’s called blatant fraud.

Sadly, his parents were in cahoots with him; must’ve thought their little darling’s techno brain was infallible. Now they have to face the consequences of his illegal activities, as they too profited from his ill-gotten gains. I mean holy moly! How does dad explain away thousands of Euros in his bank account? Surely Santa’s elves didn’t put them there. So he’s being done for money laundering. Mum got a smaller cut, so I’m sure her sentence will reflect that!

You can imagine all Maltese outfits are diligently taking precautions so that they don’t get stung by a similar attack. I’m sure they are all on high alert to get their house in order, watertight, to avoid similar shenanigans. They don’t want any computer whiz kid, Nordic or otherwise, to have a pop at them.

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Crime doesn’t pay…a lesson one hopes this young man has learnt and he gives his computer a wide berth until he can act legally and responsibly. Hope he sets his sights on doing a paper round to earn extra cash. Obviously, not as lucrative…but so much healthier than being done for cyber crime.

Wake up, smell the coffee, take the consequences and learn from your massive underhand sneakiness. Any thoughts of repeating this? Don’t even think about it young sir…. you cooked your goose well and truly.