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An update on a classic scam
Since moving ISP recently, my junk mail has been drastically reduced. However, the following email managed to get past my ISP's junk mail filter, but didn't survive Microsoft Outlook's filter.
Subject: Fellow E bay member - From seller "bwgs"
Dear Fellow eBay Member,
I am sending you this email as you are a past contact of mine on eBay through
PayPal. Sorry if you have had this info before or if you are already doing it!
Please do not delete this before reading it in full - it is not a scam and is
not junk mail!
It actually works. You will note from my feedback that
I am a genuine user of both eBay and PayPal.
We are all eBay users to make money or save money and I feel sure that we can
both benefit financially from the following plan.
Yes, you like myself have no doubt had this idea put forward before, but not in
connection with 71 million PayPal accounts. PayPal have also admitted that this
is legal.
All it involves is a one off payment of £3.00 and approximately 15 to 20 minutes
of your time.
These are some of the e-mails 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 e-mails 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
"I was very sceptical when I first read this e-mail, nearly deleted it but then
I thought about it & decided to give it a go! I spend more than £3 per week on
the lottery, so what's a one-off payment of £3 going to matter?!!
I've got my fingers crossed that I'll have some extra spending money in my
PayPal account, by the time I go away in
July!" - Dawn Brown, Leicestershire. (PS.Wishing good luck & fortune to you
all!)
If you are eager like I am by this stage, then read the instructions outlined
below that are from the original e-mail. It is really so easy to do - then you
can just sit back and wait for those payments to go into your PayPal account.
INSTRUCTIONS
I did the following in 20 Mins,your Paypal History can take a little time to get
to you depending on how much History you have!! This information arrives to you
in an
Excel Format.
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" If you don’t your email will not be forwarded by others.
Instructions on how to send a payment
are under "SEND MONEY" at the Paypal site. It is very easy.
The current list is:
1. john@johnpeterjackson.co.uk
2. ypgoodall@blueyonder.co.uk
3. jimmcmeekin@blueyonder.co.uk
4. andrewmilb@aol.com
5. awigolf@aol.com
Copy and paste this page (and make any necessary changes) Remove the email
address that you have paid from the number 1 spot, move all the others up a
space, and insert your own email address in the number 5 spot Then send the page
to as many people as you can.
A good way is to send it to all the people in your PayPal history. (GO TO
HISTORY TAB AND THEN DOWNLOAD COMPLETE LIST OF PEOPLE YOU HAVE TRADED WITH)
ALL I WOULD LIKE TO DO NOW IS WISH YOU GOOD LUCK. IF YOU ARE STILL UNSURE OR
EVEN IF YOU WOULD JUST LIKE TO KNOW HOW THIS WORKS PLEASE READ ON
HERE'S HOW IT WORKS
When you send out your email, your email address will initially be at No 5 on
the list. That is the best position that you can be in if you want to earn
serious money.
The response rate for this program is much higher than any typical email
marketing campaign for a number of reasons, which are explained later on. As
long as you send out your emails to people whom are likely to be interested
in this program, then on average you can expect a
response of around 25%. But let's be extremely conservative and assume that the
average response rate is 12.5%! If you send out your 40 emails, you can expect
at least 5 of those people to do exactly what you did (12.5% of 40 =
5 people). By the time your email address will have moved up to No 4 in the
list, and this list will now have reached
around 200 people (5 people x 40 emails = 200 people).
Out of those 200 people, you can expect at least 25 of them to participate(12.5%
of 200 = 25 people) so you are now reaching around 1000 people (25 people x 40
emails = 1000) and you are now at No 3 on the list.
Out of those 1000 people, you can expect at least 125 of them to
participate(12.5% of 1000 = 125 people) so you are now reaching around 5000
people (125 people x 40 emails = 5000) and you are now at No 2 on the list.
Out of those 5000 people, you can expect at least 625 of them to participate
(12.5% of 5000 = 625 people) so you are now reaching around 25000 people (625
people x 40 emails = 25000) and you are now at No 1 on the list.
Out of 25000 people, you can expect at least 3125 of them to participate(12.5%
of 25000 = 3125 people) so since you are at the No 1 spot you can expect to
receive around about £9,375 (3125 people x £3.00 = £9,375)so when your name
hit's the No 1 spot, it will be YOUR turn to collect the money.
Over the course of 30 days, this money will be sent to you by a few thousand
people just like yourself, who are willing to invest £3.00 and 20 minutes of
their time to receive around £10,000 or more in cash. The first payments
will arrive within a few days and then they will continue at the rate of about
100 payments per day for about 30
days (obviously this will depend on how quickly you act and how quickly people
take you up on this offer and then pass it on). After that time, the volume of
payments begin to taper off as your email is removed from the No.1 position.
That's all you need to do! There will be around £10,000 in £3.00 payments
waiting for you in your Paypal account within the next few weeks. £10,000 for
just 20 minutes work! This is real money that you can spend on anything
you wish! Just deposit it to your own bank account or spend it directly from
your Paypal account!!!
It's just that easy!!! I think it's WORTH IT, don't you?
Remember, the 12.5% example above is assuming that 35 out of the 40 people you
send your email to will do absolutely nothing except delete your email.
However, if you follow the plan correctly and send your emails only to people
who are likely to want to participate, you can expect a typical response-rate of
around 25%. Hence, the 12.5% example is only given as a worst-case
scenario.
Additionally, the above example assumes that each participant will only send out
40 emails. Imagine what would happen if each participant sent out 1,000 emails
instead of just 40! Believe me, many people will do this and much
more!
Unlike many other MLM programs, this 5-LEVEL PROGRAM costs you only £3.00 which
is much more realistic and provides much, much faster results. Only
the first person on the list gets your £3.00 gift, but everyone in the list will
rise to that Number 1 position as
thousands of emails are being sent out. No cheating can occur (don't be fooled
by claims that this system can be cheated) as PayPal only allows one account per
person.
Because it is so easy, the response rate is VERY HIGH and VERY FAST - Internet
email FAST, and you will start seeing dramatic results in less than one week!
JUST IN TIME FOR NEXT MONTHS BILLS!
Thank you, and good luck in your ventures.
PS. You can download your PayPal history as a MS Excel file, this is a great way
to quickly access all your stored email address's from your PayPal transactions,
to send this email on to another (don't forget to remove the UK eBay fees email
address if that appears). Once you've downloaded the
history, locate the 2 columns that contain the email addresses you have sent to
or received PayPal funds from. Then just cut and paste these into your "Send to"
list on your email.
Thanks for reading and good luck!
Robert
Using the old maxim - if it looks too good to be true, then it is - it doesn't take too much to see the obvious holes in this plan. For it to work, it needs increasingly more people at the bottom end of the scale to send £3 and get nothing. Or, alternatively, it needs people at the bottom end of the scale to tap into the people who've already participated. So, either it exploits the people late to the party, or it gives everyone a chance to borrow £10000 from the scheme, but ultimately return it to make everyone have the apparent benefit. It's a load of rubbish. I replied to all with this email:
With the greatest of respect to whichever tosspot thought this scheme up, it
can only work for the first few people who do it. If everyone does it, then
where does the money come from? People lower down the chain need to find people
to participate who have not participated already, or they need to start
reclaiming £3 from people who received a bunch of £3. If this system worked to
its inevitable conclusion then there would either be:
1. A lot of people who have paid £3 and received nothing
2. A lot of £3s that have been transferred around between people, who have
reparticipated in the scheme, until everyone's net gain is 0
Only a bloody idiot would join in this scheme.
Good luck!
Still, it's worth a try... right?
No!
I'll post any replies I get to my email below. (Don't hold your breath.)
From: fordlatch41@tiscali.co.uk
You are right , and I sat and thought about it a lot when another member sent
it to me , but I thought of a way of doing it and not costing me a penny .
However I am still very wary of the scheme but what the the hell , give it a go
seeing as it was free to me , mmmmm the mind boggles the more I try to make
sense of it
I suppose it would be possible to cheat the scheme by putting your name on the list before forwarding the mail to other people, despite the fact that there's supposed to be some security in the bit where you put instructions in the PayPal transfer to the next person. However, the big problem with this scheme is that it's a load of RUBBISH!
01 May 2006
Ashley Frieze