Yet another pyramid scam...

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Famine

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Rule 12
GTP_Famine
How stupid do you people think we really are?

Subject: PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THIS BEFORE READING, CHECK THIS OUT. IT WORKS

Dear Fellow eBay Member,

I am sending you this email as you are a past contact of mine on eBay through PayPal. If you follow the instructions below, you'll see my name appear amongst your transactions. 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! I've never been convinced by one of these things
before but this one seems to make sense.

We are all eBay users to make money or save money and I feel sure that we can benefit financially from the following plan.

Like myself, you have no doubt had this idea put forward before, but not in connection with 71 million PayPal accounts. Apparently PayPal
have also agreed that this is legal.

All it involves is a one off payment of 3.00 or $5.00 and approximately 15 to 20 minutes of your time.

Here's some feedback about the plan.

"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 all of this has convinced you, 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

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.

Instructions on how to send a payment are under "SEND MONEY" at the Paypal site. It is very easy.

The current list is:
1 mattcevans@btinternet.com
2 iamaciver@hotmail.co.uk
3 rsevospeed@hotmail.com
4.alifreddy@aol.com
5.tahir2005@hotmail.co.uk

Copy and paste this page. 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. (There is no point cheating, I.e. If you put yourself at no. 1 and sent it to 40 people and only 12.5% replied, then only 5 people would pay you which = 15) So, follow the rules for proper sums of money!

A good way is to send it to all the people in your PayPal history - I did the following in under 20 minutes. You can too by following these
simple steps:

After logging on to Paypal, click on the History Tab

Then click on 'download my history' Enter a from date (so basically when You first started using Paypal)

In the 'File types for download' drop down menu select 'Tab Delimited - Completed'

Click on the button Download History.

When the dialogue box appears, save the text file to somewhere easy to access e.G. Your desktop.

Your Paypal History can take a little time to get to you depending on how much History you have!!

Once downloaded open the file using Excel (or similar software)

Filter the email addresses to remove instances of duplicates, your own email address and also mine.

Once you have done this, copy and paste the addresses into your forwarded email.

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 No5 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 its 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

"It is not a scam and is not junkmail"... For crying out loud...
 
Famine
What in particular are you haveing trouble understanding?

*having :sly:

Why even bother to look at it, just delete them straight away.
 
If enough people took part, this would actually work.

Until it filters out, then the last people would lose out.

But for £3 you can't go that far wrong.
 
DQuaN
If enough people took part, this would actually work.

Until it filters out, then the last people would lose out.

Which is rather the point. Pyramid schemes only benefit the people at the top, because as the number of people participating increases, the number of people who haven't yet participated decreases...
 
Famine - I don't get it, I may sound stupid but I don't know if it's a scam or not.

George
 
It is a scam... admittedly, like all pyramid schemes, a very few people will make money out of it... but the vast majority will not.

The total amount of cash is limited to the total number of people who enter the system. Each person pays £3... it's not much to lose, but lose it you almost certainly will.

The 'examples' in the email are almost certainly bull, but even if they are not, think of it this way. If one person makes £3000 out of it, that means that 1,000 people have lost their £3... note that some of the examples claim to have made much more than this...

How do people make their money back? By scamming someone else, basically... there will always be far more losers than winners in these things, and your chances of losing are extremely high...

You'd be better putting your £3 on a horse at 100-1... atleast the odds are clearly explained before you part with your cash in a bookmaker's... in these things, you really have no clue about what the odds are of a return.
 
So would it be possible to be both at the top of a pyramid and at the bottom?

What would happen with the money? I think it would even out.
 
GeorgeMorley
Famine - I don't get it, I may sound stupid but I don't know if it's a scam or not.

George

Imagine a sample set of 15 people.

Person 1, on the top level, sends an e-mail to four others saying "Give me a quid and send this on to four others". He gets two responses and gets £2.

Persons 2 and 3 are the people that replied and gave Person 1 £1 each. They get 3 responses between them and get £3 between them.

Persons 4, 5 and 6 are the respondees and get 4 responses between them - £4.

Persons 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the respondees to that and get 5 responses between them - £5.

Persons 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 are the respondees, each giving £1. But to whom do THEY send the e-mail? Everyone in the set has been emailed and participated... The overall picture is:

Level 1 - 1 person - £0 in, £2 out - £2 profit per person.
Level 2 - 2 people - £2 in, £3 out - £0.5 profit per person.
Level 3 - 3 people - £3 in, £4 out - £0.33 profit per person.
Level 4 - 4 people - £4 in, £5 out - £0.20 profit per person.
Level 5 - 5 people - £5 in, £0 out - £1 loss per person.
Net - 15 people - £14 in, £14 out - No change per person

The thing you must remember is that no money is created by the system, only shifted around, and that you have a limited set of potential participants - in this case PayPal users - who will not participate more than once, so where you have people making £9,000, you must have 3,000 people losing £3. It's not much to lose, but they DO lose it - for no benefit and no effort on behalf of the people that take it.
 
Of course the really sad thing about scams like these is that some people are actually taken in by them..and so the cycle continues.

P.S be wary of any emails from paypal informing you that a new person has been registered to your account and that it has been locked temporarily, of course you have to go log in and give them your pin number and bank account details.....like you would! Happened to a family member of mine this week, and the bogus paypal site is more than enough to convince some people......
 
Just like the people who buy into "money making" infomercials on late-night TV. ...All pyramid schemes.

Anyway, Famine, have you ever thought that all of the e-mail accounts listed are 1 guy? You could circulate your own edited paypal account list so that you are every single "profit-making" tier.
 
Omnis
Just like the people who buy into "money making" infomercials on late-night TV. ...All pyramid schemes.

Anyway, Famine, have you ever thought that all of the e-mail accounts listed are 1 guy? You could circulate your own edited paypal account list so that you are every single "profit-making" tier.
Or you could also just pass it on without ever coughing up your share of the cash. I don't see anyone checking on the validity of this.


A much more ethical option would be to forward this to PayPal themselves to alert them of the scheme.
 
Well... that's pretty stupid...
But I bet its worked a few times, I know a few people stupid enough. Not quite me, Im not quite that bad.
 
More genius from The Simpsons: "Is this a pyramid scheme? No, absolutely not. Our model is 'the trapezoid'!".
Touring Mars
You'd be better putting your £3 on a horse at 100-1... atleast the odds are clearly explained before you part with your cash in a bookmaker's...
And it also gives you the right to yell and scream at a poor animal which is being tortured for your enjoyment! :)

Some of you have the mentality that "it's just $3". Well, maybe to you. But if there are enough saps saying that, then somebody is getting rich from YOUR MONEY with NO EFFORT. If you saw a person on the street, with $5,000 in a hat, begging you for change, would you give any to them? This is pretty much the same thing. If you want to get rich from $3, go buy a lottery ticket. At least that way, your money will be going back to local goverments, where it can be used for something useful, not for buying scammers a new TV.
 
kylehnat
If you want to get rich from $3, go buy a lottery ticket. At least that way, your money will be going back to local goverments, where it can be used for something useful, not for buying scammers a new TV.
You ever actually look at your state budget to see where that money goes? In Kentucly it was supposed to go towards schools but then got siphoned to roads due to a budget crisis. They haven't mentioned where it goes now, but I know there are still car-sized potholes in the interstate and we still rank around 48 in education.

If you act quick I think you still have a better chance of benefitting from the pyramid scheme. At least the money has an understood cycling process instead of just a blackhole.
 
FoolKiller
You ever actually look at your state budget to see where that money goes?
Okay, so Senator Cantwell uses that money to buy a jewel-encrusted toilet seat. It's still a worthy cause.
FoolKiller
If you act quick I think you still have a better chance of benefitting from the pyramid scheme.
No you don't. By the time "common" people get in on the deal, it's too late. The scammers make sure that they are the only ones profiting.
 
Dave_George
Of course the really sad thing about scams like these is that some people are actually taken in by them..and so the cycle continues.

P.S be wary of any emails from paypal informing you that a new person has been registered to your account and that it has been locked temporarily, of course you have to go log in and give them your pin number and bank account details.....like you would! Happened to a family member of mine this week, and the bogus paypal site is more than enough to convince some people......

PayPal actually has the best anti-phishing advice. They say that you should never enter PayPal through a link in an e-mail. Simply open a browser and type in "paypal.com". It (like all really clever things) is such a simple concept.
 
kylehnat
Okay, so Senator Cantwell uses that money to buy a jewel-encrusted toilet seat. It's still a worthy cause.
Sounds painful. :crazy:

No you don't. By the time "common" people get in on the deal, it's too late. The scammers make sure that they are the only ones profiting.
Well, I will just make my own then. It's that simple. 💡
 
FoolKiller
Well, I will just make my own then. It's that simple. 💡
Now you've got the idea! :sly:

In fact, I'll help you get started. Just send me $3, and I'll send you a brochure on how to make a pyramid scheme. Oh, and don't forget to tell 10 friends about it.
 
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