As a kid, I was always fascinated by the wretched hives of scum and villainy in pop culture. I loved watching the absolute dregs of the galaxy gather in the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine, or the cutthroats drinking themselves blind in Tortuga from Pirates of the Caribbean. They are fun, romanticized fantasies of lawlessness.

But there is an island in Europe where these two images —the sun-scorched desert rock and the lawless pirate haven— blend together perfectly. Welcome to Malta.

If you come here looking for honesty, you will usually be bitterly disappointed. In just the last four weeks alone, amidst dealing with profound personal grief, I have had a front-row seat to the local grift. I had to watch twice as people looked me dead in the eye and tried to scam me.

The €9,000 Paint Job

My house needed a fresh coat of paint. Simple enough. I called a local painter, and he quoted me approximately €9,000 for the interior.

To justify this astronomical number, he spun a wildly elaborate tale: the specific paint required was only available in a highly specialized shop over on the main island of Malta. The walls, he insisted, needed extensive professional sanding first. He calculated that it would take him and his three employees a full five days to complete the job, billing me at an hourly rate of €23 per worker.

Here is the reality of the island:

• The exact paint he was talking about was sitting on a shelf in a hardware store right around the corner.

• I knew for a fact the walls didn't need special treatment because he was the exact same guy who painted the house right before we moved in. (But he didn't knew me)

• He doesn't have three highly-paid specialists. He has one worker, whom he pays €8 an hour (bringing his total employer cost to maybe €11 an hour).

We ended up buying the paint and doing it ourselves. It cost us €250 in materials and 12 hours of our own time.

The Undertaker Extortion

You would think the grifting stops at home improvement. It doesn't. It extends all the way to the grave.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my father-in-law recently passed away. His final wish was to be cremated. Now, Malta has been "planning" a crematorium for a while, but unless a development puts food directly on the table of a politician or a developer tomorrow morning, progress here moves at a glacial pace. Because there is no functional crematorium on the island, he has to be transported to Catania, Sicily.

The initial cost I was given for this logistical necessity was €4,900.

Curious, and frankly exhausted by the constant feeling of being fleeced, I decided to call around to other, smaller funeral directors just to see the market rate. The quotes I received were staggering—some reaching as high as €10,000.

But the absolute peak of absurdity came from one undertaker who offered me a "bargain" at €3,000. His brilliant, cost-saving proposal? We simply bury my father-in-law in a local cemetery —essentially tuck him away in the dirt for now— and then, whenever the Maltese government finally gets around to finishing the planned crematorium, we just dig him back up and burn him then.

Wow. Just... wow.

A Two-Tiered System of Anarchy

Corruption and nepotism have deep historical roots here, and it creates a brazen, two-tiered justice system.

Just recently, a young Maltese man from the upper class killed someone with his sports car. The result? He was quickly released from investigative custody and even had his sports car returned to him. Contrast this with a recent case involving a foreign driver who accidentally hit an elderly woman. He was immediately thrown into custody for days and practically guaranteed to lose his license indefinitely before the dust even settled.

It is fascinating, in a morbid way, to watch how quickly anarchy morphs into hyper-capitalism. When the rules don't apply to the connected, the entire ecosystem becomes about extracting maximum capital from whoever is vulnerable at the moment.

The Fever Dream

The daily news reads like a satirical crime novel. As I write this, a Maltese woman is currently standing trial because she successfully masqueraded as a bank employee, smooth-talking elderly investors and completely draining them of near to €1 million.

This island is a fever dream.

Don't get me wrong—there are genuinely good, honest people living here. But the noise of the scammers is so loud, and the systemic grift so deeply ingrained, that you have to live here for a very long time to develop the radar required to find them. Until then, you just have to navigate the cantina, keep your hand on your wallet, and trust absolutely no one.