Help! Police! We’ve got bedbugs!

Or not.

Greece’s health ministry called in the police . . . but not for a bedbug problem. Officials need help with people pretending Greece has a bedbug problem.

Hoaxers try to scare foreign tourists in Athens, Greece. (A hoaxer is a person playing a prank or spreading a lie.) Why claim you’ve got bedbugs when you don’t? To keep people from staying there.

The bedbug “problem” actually exposes a bigger trouble underneath. Athens and other parts of Greece have a housing dilemma. Many Greeks can’t afford to pay for a place to live. That’s because tourists from other countries rent homes. Vacationers can afford to pay high prices for a short stay. Local folks can’t do that year-round.

So hoaxers created a scare. They put up posters outside apartment buildings in the city center. The posters addressed “dear visitors” in misspelled English. They claimed that health authorities had ordered local “private guesthouses” to be evacuated. Why? “To protect the public health of permanent Greek tenants.” The false signs also said anyone who stayed in the apartment buildings would have to pay a $540 fine.

Nobody wants bedbugs. The apple-seed-sized crawlies can’t jump or fly. They travel on people and their belongings. They don’t spread diseases, but they bite people and are mighty hard to get rid of.

Greece hasn’t recorded any major trouble with bedbugs. But now tourists may hear that bugs are about. Will the trick keep visitors away?

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness.” — 1 Corinthians 3:19