posted on May 24, 2005 01:41:30 PM new
Well this one isn't a spoof but it is a version of the old pyramid scheme - I got it from an ebay buyer of mine (I looked him up - he is really a buyer of mine) I sent it on to spoof@paypal anyway - never heard back
Hello.. I'm sending you this email as you are a past contact
of mine on ebay.
I don't normally believe in this kind of thing, (probably like you too) but I thought it was worth the £3 one off paypal payment... and it's a bit of fun.
I've given it a go...fingers crossed!
Please ignore this if you're not interested... but curiosity got the better of me, maybe it will for you too?!
**MEMBER NAME
(bought and sold differant items on ebay)
This is a copy of the original advert that I have now taken part in.If I have joined then I can only guess that many others will too,and that’s how the whole thing works.
You may have seen an email floating around
about making huge amounts of money through your Paypal
account? Whether you have or not, i'm sending you this
to tell you that the scheme actually works and Paypal
have actually admitted its legal!
Please read on and see what you think. If you want to
participate, please just copy this email, replace my
message with your own and send it to all your contacts
- *YOU CAN GATHER ALL PAST CONTACTS EMAIL ADDRESSES
THROUGH YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT HISTORY*.
Before we go any further I would like you to know
straight away that this will cost you £3 and about 20
- 30 minutes of your time. If you are still interested
please read on.
Now I am not promising that you are going to make
£££££'s in 30 days but I must admit the odds look
excellent, and the 2nd excellent thing about this
business plan is that it can be done by anyone,
anywhere in the world and
your total investment stays at just £3.
These are some of the emails and proof that I came
across which finally
made me decide that I wanted to try this.
"What an amazing plan. I followed the instructions
just 3 weeks ago, and although I haven't made 10 grand
yet, I am already up to £6,135. I am absolutely gob
smacked" - Alan Humphries, Leicester
"Well what can I say? I sent out 40 emails like the
plan said then I just forgot about the whole thing. To
be honest, I didn't really think anything would come
of it, but I checked my Paypal account a week later
and there was over £3000.00 in it!!! After 30 days I
now have over £11,000 to spend"
- Lisa McDonald, Northampton
"I was shocked when I saw how much money came flooding
into my Paypal account. Within 3 weeks my account
balance has ballooned to £7,449. At first I thought
there had been some kind of error!" - Richard Barrie,
Cirencester
Well that's it. I hope that you decide to go ahead
with it. If you decide that
this isn't for you I wish you all the best in the
future and please
remember you can always pass it on even if you don't
wish to do it
yourself.
INSTRUCTIONS
the first thing you need to do is send a £3.00 payment from your Paypal account to the FIRST
email address in the list below, along with a note saying "PLEASE ADD ME TO YOUR LIST". Instructions on how to send a payment are under "SEND MONEY" at the Paypal
site. It is very easy.
The current list is:
1 email address
2 amother email address
3 ditto
4 ditto
5 my buyer
The last thing you need to do is copy and paste this
page (and make any necessary changes)
posted on May 24, 2005 02:30:50 PM new
This is a "Ponzi" scheme & is very illegal in the USA. I wouldn't touch this a 10 foot Pole or a 9 foot Norwegion!!
posted on May 24, 2005 11:51:13 PM new
Not unless it is also illegal in the UK. Your sender is a Brit (notice the £ signs as opposed to $). I got one of those as well. As one of my UK customers once told me.... 99% of all brits ruin it for the good ones .
Seriously though... there is a major flaw in this plan. Anyone who has seen these sceme knows that you send funds to the first 3 - 5 people on the list. Then you insert your name in the first slot and send it on. This way you get funds for 3-5 generations of the list. This list has only 1 generation. If you only send funds to the first name then you are only able to get funds from one generation of stupid people.
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on May 26, 2005 12:57:53 AM new
My advise is let the federal boy's handle this one. Link for Internet Fraud reporting http://www.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp This is a link to the FBI to report internet fraud. I have filed many complaint's with them over the years and I must say they are very effective in dealing with the reports you send in. Everything I have ever reported has been shut down within day's. Also good for reporting fraud if you get suckered on ebay. If ebay or paypal won't do anything give them the detail's and let the fed's handle it. They got my money refunded on a bad sale on ebay once that ebay and paypal refused to act on. The FBI contacted the seller and within 5 day's I had a cashiers check in my hand and I guess they contacted ebay because he was suspended and has not been back since. Hope this helps.
posted on May 26, 2005 05:58:42 AM new
Fenix is right - It looked like all the people on the list were in the UK - I don't think that the FBI has jurisdiction across the pond. This was sent to me by some poor gullible shmoe. I am not going to report him to Interpol! If the first name on the list were Osama bin Laden however I guess it would be a different story!
-------------------------------------
posted on May 26, 2005 12:31:28 PM new
Yes the FBI can do something about crime that is from another country if it is commited in this country. They work hand in hand with agency's all over the world to stop this kind of thing. If you go to their site and read some of the information they have in many of their links you will find that alot of the cases that they close are from people from other countries, it's just not the FBI slapping on the cuff's, it's the police in the country of origin. As for the gullible shmoe, they really are not interested in them. They are trying to find and prosocute the people that actually start this kind of thing, believe it or not the FBI does realize that regular everyday shmoes get caught up in scam's. They are interested in the "henchmen" if you catch my drift. I have reported to them a couple of times before about scam's sent by other people that got caught up in the scam themself. Two such people actually contacted me after the FBI had contacted them to appologize for sending the criminal email in the first place. I contacted them back and they said the FBI just contacted then and wanted to know how they had been contacted, no arrest or prosocution of the unsuspecting shmoe, they want the big dog.
.