E-mail Scams - A Personal Experience

Over the weekend I conducted an experiment that convinced me to quit feeling guilty about deleting e-mails that asked me to forward the contents to friends in my contacts. I received an e-mail early Friday containing that very request. The e-mail had some nice poetry that pointed out a 'house did not make a home, money did not make me rich' and 'puppies were just little bundles of love' (all with the appropriate artwork). I was instructed to forward within 1 hour the correspondence contained to at least 20 close friends and relatives and that within 72 hours I would experience a windfall of good luck.

With regrets I picked 20 people that were either very close to me or that I did not care if I upset or looked like an idiot to. I even explained in my forwarding that I was sorry for the inconvenience but that I needed a load of good luck like a dead man needs a coffin and the recipients just needed to suck it up and take it this one last time. I was determined to monitor the results this time since I always have tended to forget to follow up in the past when I got and sent this type of garbage. Well now the results are in and I want to report my findings.

I played three rounds of golf in the following 72 hours and lost $2.50 the first round, $7.00 the second round and $18.50 the third round. It was a long holiday weekend and my wife Patsy suffered through the entire 3 days with a severe case of poison ivy. I tried to cook some pork chops on my green egg that turned out worse than the charcoal I used if I had elected to eat my cooking fuel. I did not see one grandchild except for my grandson Wallace and that for only 5 minutes. The strange little red light I had never seen started blinking on my truck while driving the block and a half from the golf course to my house added to the misery. I sent 20 of these damn e-mails and that's my windfall of luck for the 72 hours of bliss I was promised. I have had better luck when I forwarded naked pictures of Oprah during the heavy years.

Not only was my luck stinking, I infected everyone around me with bad luck. Poor ole Patsy suffered all weekend with her poison ivy. George Faison, one of my golfing partners, played golf like 'Gomer Pyle' on Saturday and Monday when he played with me and shot a great 78 on Sunday playing on a strange course that he drove 100 miles to play. I turned my 'A' player into a twelve handicapper and I putted worse than my 9-month-old grandson. To top it off there was an article in the local paper telling about how my spiritual leader and Sunday School teacher had opened a bar with her husband. The paper even had a picture of her brazened above the centerfold standing in front of 15 wine bottles like she was a taster at Ernest and Julio's guesthouse.

The e-mail thing does not work. All you are doing is sending along some nice poetry and pretty pictures to someone that probably does not have time to waste scrolling through the mess. I would feel better if I had sent something that was at least original. The drivel I sent had been around for years. Most of what it said was true but nothing new, a lot like all the political speeches we are hearing now. Maybe someone told Hillary that if she passed what she's saying along she would have good luck. It didn't work for me and it doesn't look like it's going to work for her.

In spite of all this I'm not discouraged. I just got an e-mail that tells me there is a guy in India holding $10,000,000 for me that was left after some bank got their numbers mixed up on some of their accounts. All I've got to do is respond to a Mr. Dr. Henue at 'henue.WorldwideBank@yahoo.com' and as soon as I send $750 to cover some immediate tax requirements they will transfer the $10,000,000 to my account. Now this is something I can rely on, not luck but just good fortune. I should have this wrapped up in a few days and then I'll tell you about 'good luck'.