Get Rich Quick

[PaulnCarole]

This morning I received a letter in the post, telling me that if I send a pound coin to the five names listed on the letter, I will receive up to fifty thousand pounds. It says I must take two hundred copies of the letter and post the copies on to different people. Have any Answerbankers had any dealings with this sort of thing? My usual opinion is, if it sounds too good to be true, it IS too good to be true. Thanks.

[Didwot]

It is a good old fashioned chain letter. The person who starts the chain may make quite a few pounds, as may the next few people, but do the maths. You send the letter to 200 people, they each send it to 200 people. 200 times 200 is 40,000. Two more moves and the total is 1,600,000,000, and after the next (fifth) move your name reaches the top of the list, but by now the letter is being sent to 320,000,000,000 people. Yes 320 BILLION which is many times the total world population. Somewhere before this the whole chain collapses. Even if you only had to make two copies the number of recipients reaches over one million after only 20 generations of the letter, and doubles with each successive generation reaching over a billion copies in only 30 moves and 10 billion in 37 moves. All chain letters grow exponentially, and collapse before very long. Save your money. Save your stamps.

[Loosehead]

This scam is well know, It's been going around on snail and email for a long time. The theory sounds plausable but most people will cheat and not send the money hence blowing it out of the water. then there is the take up 5% is considered very good so you have to send zillions out and if you are using snail mail that's a lot of stamps! I thought this particular scam is email only now because of the cost. Yous usual opinion is correct!

[Solarjunkie]

Well, these things have been around for so long I actually decided to give one a go. I worked out it would cost me approx �14, and yes, I was willing to risk that amount, so I did. Did I get �250,000? Or even �25? No, I got zilch, pretty much as I expected, despite the scheme being "guaranteed"!!

[PaulnCarole]

Thanks to all who answered - my instincts were right!