In 2007, Rotina Mavhunga, a medicine woman conned President Robert Mugabe's government out of about $1-million by bamboozling ministers into believing she could tap diesel fuel from a rock and they believed her.

Rotina Mavhunga, who goes by the alias of Nomatter Tagirira, found an abandoned fuel tank in the bush near the northern town of Chinhoyi in March 2007.She filled it with diesel, attached a pipe to the outlet and concealed it at the top of a rock.

She then summoned a top government official to witness her "discovery". At a signal, a hidden accomplice would open the tap on the pipe and the officials would gasp in amazement as refined diesel poured down the side of the rock.

A cabinet "task force" dispatched by Mugabe to investigate the claim returned to declare that Zimbabwe's persistent fuel shortages were at an end.

Government officials and businessmen lavished money and vehicles on Mavhunga until several months later, when a second group of ministers began to express doubt about the woman's bona fides.

She was later convicted of defrauding the government in 2009.