 The Luckiest Man Alive By Michael Willard |
In the past two weeks, I have won more than $3 million in on-line lotteries, and have received five fantastic requests to help a
Mr. Brown, son of a late dictator, get his money out of Africa for a handsome facilitation fee.
With such wonderful luck, why do I bother to slog away at the advertising and PR business in the battleground of Eastern Europe when riches come my way nearly every time I turn on my computer.
Maybe I'm eccentric, or just cantankerous, one of those fellows who wins the lottery then complains about the tax he has to pay on the loot. No, I think I am just the ultimate skeptic, though I did win $300 bucks at the ponies one day at Kentucky's Keeneland track.
My problem stems from long ago, back when as a lad and a reporter on a newspaper called the Tampa Times I covered the Florida Land Sales Board. The Board investigated con men (and women) who sold swamp land to little old couples from proverbial Pasadena.
There were many of them, both the shysters and the little old folks.
I learned to whiff a scam. They usually gave off a scent of cheap perfume, and rarely would challenge the intelligence of Cro-Magnon man. These folks that bombard me in Kiev are no different, though they must have some takers, or else they are wasting fairly interesting yarns.
They go something like this:
"I am Mubuto Clay Brown, the son and rightful heir to the throne of Giatwana in Central Africa. As you probably read in the newspapers, my father Chief Mobanki Brown was recently overthrown and murdered, along with my mother and all my brothers and sisters.
"Before my father died, he deposited $20 million in the People's Bank of Giatwana, and that money remains there today. I am reaching out to you because you were recommended to me by associates as a reputable businessman.
"I need your valuable assistance to expatriate this money, and for this I will pay you a facilitation fee of 10 per cent, or $2 million. There is no risk involved. All you need do is email me your bank details...."
It is here the saying "a fool and his money are soon parted." I definitely lack one part of this equation, money.
But there is also a common saying that all of us have a little larceny in us, and few of us are beyond obtaining something for virtually nothing. There might have been, for me, a shop lifting episode at age 10, and I did once dip into my mother's purse for a fiver.
But I wonder who actually succumbs, if anyone, to the lure of these internet pirates? Or is it a zero-sum game, and the son of Prince Mobanki Brown has bombarded half the planet with these emails for years with nary a taker.
How does Donald Trump --knee-deep in bankruptcy problems -- react when he gets Mr. Brown's email? Why does Mr. Brown think that I -- who live hand to mouth -- is worthy of his scam? Inquiring minds want to know.
Then there was this warm letter from Mr. Jose Louis Thomas who informs me cheerfully through the internet: "Your name is attached to ticket number 004-05117963-198 with serial number 99375 and that the lucky numbers of 05-07-11-12-13-1=27, and consequently won the lottery in the third category."
Wow. Not the first category, or the second, but the third. That entitled me to a lump sum of $1,5 million, something I could have surely used during the holiday season. Mixing currencies, I was also informed that the entire pot was 80 plus million euros.
But what is really fantastic about this is that I won the same lottery again a week later with total different tickets that were drawn without my knowledge. I'm so lucky I'm glowing.
All winners, the email says, were chosen through a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 names around the world. However, there was a weird postscript. "Due to the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award strictly from public notice until your claim has been processed and your money remitted to your account."
I was told whom I should contact next, and that person, I presume, would kindly take my banking account information.
So, all I have to do is keep my trap shut, and something even better than those 15 vestal virgins (what is a vestal virgin?) and 20 gallons of fudge ripple Hagen Daz will come my way so long as I claim my money by Dec. 29.
What a deal.
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Read also previous issue' articles:
Expats: Why Are We Here?
Being Vladimir Putin
The Age of Unreason?
Yes, I Give a Damn
News:
The Rush to Judgment
Language Fraud
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