Ch-ch-chain letter home > backlash

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.)

Replies

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