Ebay Scam - Anyone else get this?

Dennis the Stone

Got his email.. Anybody pay the money?

Dear Fellow Ebayer,

PLEASE READ THIS EMAIL, IT IS NOT JUNK OR SPAM MAIL.

It's from Peter Winstone - a fellow E-Bayer!

THIS IS A GENUINE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR YOUR NEXT
HOLIDAY
IT'S AMAZING!!!

As we have traded together on eBay and trust exists between us, I
thought
you might be interested in this opportunity. The most you can lose is
£3.00
and the most you can gain is hundreds, even thousands. I would never
normally take part in this sort of scheme but after reading several
emails I
thought I'd give it a try!
I have just paid someone £3.00, so it is working for someone!!

As you may know I am a regular seller and buyer on eBay and use Paypal
as a
genuine person hoping to earn some cash. I know Jennifer, the person who
sent
me
the message, she is also a genuine eBayer who I trust . She has bought
some
goods from me through paypal and so I feel for once it is the real
deal!

WE WILL DEFINITELY BOTH BENEFIT FINANCIALLY FROM THE FOLLOWING
PLAN......
This email is going around Paypal and eBay users and it's DEFINITELY
working.
Please do not delete this before reading in full, it is not a scam and
is
not junk mail. Yes, like me, you have no doubt heard this before in
some
form but not in connection with 78 million paypal accounts. Paypal have
also
admitted that this is legal and trading standards are not aware of any
problem.

All it involves is a one off payment of £3.00, and approximately 20
minutes
of your time. Then just watch the cash for your next holiday just roll
in!

These are some of the emails that I came across which finally made me
decide
that I wanted to try this. I'm just trying it for fun really, I'm
sceptical
about it I will admit, but I'm fed up of trying to win the lottery!

Emails other people have attached to the message:




'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'm
absolutely gob smacked' - Alan Humphries, Leicester.

'Well what can I say? I sent out 40 emails like the plan said then 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 £3,000 in it!!! After 30 days I now have over £11,000 to spend' -
Lisa
'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 email, I nearly deleted it
but
then thought about it and decided to give it a go. Some people 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 will have some extra
spending
money in my Paypal account very soon! PS Wishing good luck and fortune
to
you all' - Jackie

The USUAL problem with these types of scheme is that they run out of
people
to pass onto & people aren't always comfortable sending these things to
friends - but with 78 million users and more joining every day, how
likely
is that? Plus, they usually require high investment - this doesn't. If
you
are eager like I am by this stage, then read the instructions outlined
below
taken from the original email. It is really 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 go to www.paypal.co.uk and send a
£3.00
payment from your PayPal account (click the send payment tab) to the FIRST email address in the list
below. You will also have to select a Subject; either 'Service/Other'
or
'Goods (other)' is fine. Instructions on how to send a payment
are
under 'SEND MONEY' at the Paypal site. It is very easy:
The current EMAIL list:


1. ryandunn21@googlemail.com
2. fatdaveslim1000@yahoo.com
3. miltonjmganesh@googlemail.com
4. jenniferha@lycos.com
5. pkwinstone@yahoo.co.uk


Either Forward or Copy and paste this whole page (and make any
necessary
changes). REMOVE Ryan Dunn's email address that you have paid
from the
NUMBER 1
SPOT, move all the others up ONE space, and insert your own email
address in
the NUMBER 5 SPOT (Remember to take EXTRA care when typing the email
addresses) 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 on paypal to download your trading partners email
address's, using the DOWNLOAD MY HISTORY button in the left hand box.
Choose
'custom date range' - select 'comma delimited - all activity' from file
types to be downloaded Then press 'download history' at bottom of page.
A
spreadsheet will be downloaded with a complete list of people you've
traded
with Highlight the column which contains email addresses copy then
paste
them into the 'to' section when creating the email then just send the
email,
EASY!

HOW IT WORKS: (this is the good bit)
When you send 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 wants 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 you can expect on average 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 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, 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 x
40 emails) 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) so you are now reaching 5000 people 125 x 40
emails)
and you are now No 2 on the list.
Out of those 5000 people you can expect at least 650 of them to
participate
(12.5% of 5000 = 625) so you are now reaching around 25000 people (625
x 40
emails) and you are now at No 1 on the list.
Out of 25000 people, you can expect at least 3,125 of them to
participate
(12.5% of 25000 = 3125) so since you are now at the No1 spot you can
expect
to receive around £9375 (3125 x £3).
So, when your name hits 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 like yourself who are willing to invest £3 and 20
minutes of
time to receive around £10,000 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 begins 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 payments waiting for you in your Paypal account
within
the next few weeks.
£10,000 for so little work! This is real money that you can spend on
anything you wish.
Just transfer it from your PayPal account to your bank account. It's
that
easy!!!
Remember, the 12.5% example is assuming 35 out of 40 people you send
your
email to will do absolutely nothing with it except delete it.
Additionally, the above example assumes that each participant will send
out
only 40 emails. Imagine what would happen if each participant sent out
1000
emails instead! You can send to as many people as you want and the more
you
send the more likely you are to make money.
Unlike many other MLM programs this 5 LEVEL PROGRAM costs you only
£3.00
which is much more realistic and provides much faster results. Only the
first person on the list gets your £3.00 gift, but everyone on the list
will
rise to the No 1 position as thousands of emails are being sent out.
No cheating can occur and don't be fooled by claims this system can be
cheated as PayPal only allows one account per person.
Because it's that easy the response rate is VERY HIGH and VERY FAST.
Internet email fast!!
You may start seeing dramatic results in less than one week.
Please remember, I value very highly our trading relationship and would
not
wish to offend you in any way, I just see this as a harmless little bit
of
excitement in the normal humdrum of life. If you see it any other way
please
just delete and ignore it.

Thanks For Reading This Email and GOOD LUCK!! Fingers crossed it's
going to
work!

Kind Regards

ironictoaster

Wow, that looks so fake. You'd want to be a right fool to fall for that.

kmick

You are an idiot for even asking the question. It is not even subtle enough to be called a scam - it is just a pay 3 euros with a chain email. Delete now.

Schism

God thats awfully long.

As a general rule, anything you get in your e-mail account about making more money is a load of ****.

prendy

got tired readin that.....
if i asked you for £3 wud u give it to me?
hate those things!!

Terry

There was a thread here earlier (now deleted) with smeone trying to pimp that.

Wook

Dear Fellow Ebayer,

PLEASE READ THIS EMAIL, IT IS NOT JUNK OR SPAM MAIL.

It's from Peter Winstone - a fellow E-Bayer!

THIS IS A GENUINE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR YOUR NEXT
HOLIDAY
IT'S AMAZING!!!

As we have traded together on eBay and trust exists between us, I


thats where i knew this couldnt be true.

coady

scam,, im an ex employee of paypal

Slow Motion

Pyramid scheme !

Schism

Slow Motion wrote:

Pyramid scheme !

exactly.

Karoma

"Unlike shadey pyramid schemes, this financial opportunity is the shape of a trapezoid"


Seriously, why are you asking? Were you considering it? Are you trying to push it? hmmm.

Dennis the Stone

I'm tired of get-rich-quick scemes but this actually looked like a way that I might get rich. And quick!

AlmightyCushion

Terry wrote:

There was a thread here earlier (now deleted) with smeone trying to pimp that.

It was in a couple of forums. I wish these spamming cunts would fuck off. :mad:

Dennis the Stone

just to add I'm not pimping it so please delete the thread if it looks like it

okidoki987

It's a pyramid scheme just made to look a little different.
The only people to make money out of it are the "starters",
the rest will lose money.
They even try to make it look good by using a small amount in this
case €3.00.
As said above AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

Exit

Isn't it true that the people at the top of the pyramid end up making the money?

So if the e-mail list is only at 5 people, you should definitely jump in there OP!

Schism

Kemos wrote:

I'm tired of get-rich-quick scemes but this actually looked like a way that I might get rich. And quick!

Kemos wrote:

just to add I'm not pimping it so please delete the thread if it looks like it

well... maybe my humour switch is just off today.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

okidoki987 wrote:

AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

hmmm 'avoid at all costs'? Really? Surely it should be 'avoid at all costs, unless those avoidance costs are likely to exceed the £3 that you are going to lose on this scam'?

... just saying

GilGrissom

1. ryandunn21@googlemail.com
2. fatdaveslim1000@yahoo.com
3. miltonjmganesh@googlemail.com
4. jenniferha@lycos.com
5. pkwinstone@yahoo.co.uk

Just signed all those up to loads of donkey p0rn sites.

dame

Got that email about 2 years ago. Of course it was deleted long ago so I can't check if it's still the same names on the list. It's probably 5 email addresses belonging to the same guy!

FX Meister

GilGrissom wrote:

Just signed all those up to loads of donkey p0rn sites.

Can you send me some links? I can never find any good donkey porn sites when I'm feeling in the mood for some inter species erotica

johnnyskeleton

Kemos wrote:

I'm tired of get-rich-quick scemes but this actually looked like a way that I might get rich. And quick!

First off, I should say that pyramid schemes are almost certainlyillegal. They are a fraud offence in the US too. Read all about them on wikipedia.

That said, I don't really get how they work. I mean, I get how some people can make money from other gullable people, but what I don't get is why don't people just forward the email onto hundreds of other people on ebay without sending any money to the guy who sent it to you? How would they know you're using their scam without having paid them, and even if they did know that, what are they going to do?

Or why not start your own scam based on the template? I'm sure you might make a lot of ill gotten gains (before getting caught), but what's the incentive to pay the other person?

StephenC_IRL

they took my idea, i started a thread a while back about using tiny amounts of money in a pyramid scheme, :mad: i want my idea back

dame

StephenC_IRL wrote:

they took my idea, i started a thread a while back about using tiny amounts of money in a pyramid scheme, :mad: i want my idea back

I'm afraid you've no come-back. They don't allow you patent a pyramid scheme.

seamus

johnnyskeleton wrote:

That said, I don't really get how they work. I mean, I get how some people can make money from other gullable people, but what I don't get is why don't people just forward the email onto hundreds of other people on ebay without sending any money to the guy who sent it to you? How would they know you're using their scam without having paid them, and even if they did know that, what are they going to do?

That's exactly what I thought when I read the system. In fact, I had to read it twice to make sure that this was as badly thought through as I think. And why 40 people? Why not 2000? Who would know?

dame

Would you really send that to all your contacts though? Personally I wouldn't because I wouldn't like to be meeting them and having them complaining at me (and thinking I must be a right twat!).

eamon234

Report him to eBay straight away.

Dennis the Stone

Well I must admit, I'm no Stephen Hawking but at the same time I'm no Gerry Ryan and I knew it was a scam. Well, you would have to be seriously dumb not to. For one thing the guy who sent it to me was not someone who I had traded with. I just started the thread to see if anyone had done it. I have a friend who got a top medicine degree and he told me once how he did one of these things; I couldn't believe it at the time that someone intelligent could fall for this crap. It wasn't one of those 'My father, President Banana has been assassinated to death and I need your bank account details to release his money' ones. It was a pyramid scheme sent to him by a friend, who had also done it. Technically speaking, couldn't a scheme like this work, if nobody submitted multiple email addresses and everyone paid in and it kept going? Someone enlighten me with the science behind it

dame

Kemos wrote:

Well I must admit, I'm no Stephen Hawking but at the same time I'm no Gerry Ryan and I knew it was a scam. Well, you would have to be seriously dumb not to. For one thing the guy who sent it to me was not someone who I had traded with. I just started the thread to see if anyone had done it. I have a friend who got a top medicine degree and he told me once how he did one of these things; I couldn't believe it at the time that someone intelligent could fall for this crap. It wasn't one of those 'My father, President Banana has been assassinated to death and I need your bank account details to release his money' ones. It was a pyramid scheme sent to him by a friend, who had also done it. Technically speaking, couldn't a scheme like this work, if nobody submitted multiple email addresses and everyone paid in and it kept going? Someone enlighten me with the science behind it

If, if , if......not all people are that honest. Plus, it's illegal.

Dennis the Stone

Someone once told me of a great way to earn good money, that was both enjoyable and easy: work. Having said that he himself had been on the dole for 3 years :rolleyes:

DonJose

Which of those 5 email addresses is yours!!!

Dennis the Stone

Christ almighty. None I'm afraid.

Black Swan

A variation on the old pyramid scheme?

Wazdakka

dame wrote:

If, if , if......not all people are that honest. Plus, it's illegal.

why is it illegal?

I honestly dont understand.
I think this is a bloody fantastic idea.
Yea its obiously a big scam,but if people were honest about it i think it would work.

The more I think about it if i did get this sent on to me I'd probably replace all the email addresses with a few quickly made ghost accounts and send it along

ah well so much for my if only everybody was a bit more honest and looked out for each other the world would blah blah blah high horse...:p

johnnyskeleton

Kemos wrote:

Technically speaking, couldn't a scheme like this work, if nobody submitted multiple email addresses and everyone paid in and it kept going? Someone enlighten me with the science behind it

If it did work like that, where everybody paid in equally and received equally, no one would make a profit. The profit comes from doing some poor soul out of his pocketmoney, repeated 1000s of times. I suppose people believe in these schemes because they see shares in google, investment properties and banks making a load of money day in day out without seeming to do anything except move bits of money about. But google gets money from advertising, property makes money from rent and higher prices (in turn caused by more purchasers) and banks make a load of money by lending and being repaid. Where in the pyramid scheme is there any money coming in?

Wazdakka wrote:

why is it illegal?

s.6 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001:

6.—(1) A person who dishonestly, with the intention of making a gain for himself or herself or another, or of causing loss to another, by any deception induces another to do or refrain from doing an act is guilty of an offence.

(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on conviction on indictment to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or both.

"dishonestly” means without a claim of right made in good faith.

Wazdakka wrote:

I honestly dont understand.
I think this is a bloody fantastic idea.
Yea its obiously a big scam,but if people were honest about it i think it would work.

If people were honest about it, it would come back and forward enough times that everyone would pay €3.00 and everyone would receive €3.00. If you think about it rationally, what goods or service is being transferred for the money? You are basically just giving money to another person in the hope that people further down the chain give you the money. The people at the bottom of the pyramid loose money while the people at the top gain it. Read all about them on wikipedia to see how they work and how some people have been shafted by them.

Wazdakka wrote:

The more I think about it if i did get this sent on to me I'd probably replace all the email addresses with a few quickly made ghost accounts and send it along

Is there any reason, apart from the illegality of it, that you don't simply copy and paste the text as posted, change the email addressses and then send it on to all your contacts?

Wazdakka wrote:

ah well so much for my if only everybody was a bit more honest and looked out for each other the world would blah blah blah high horse...:p

There is a great quote "You can't cheat an honest man". The people who pay money on these scemes are not gullable innocents, they are greedy dishonest people who sadly lack the street smarts to realise that while they think they are making a quick profit from suckers, someone slightly more inteligent is making a profit from them, and they are the suckers.

seamus

johnnyskeleton wrote:

6.—(1) A person who dishonestly, with the intention of making a gain for himself or herself or another, or of causing loss to another, by any deception induces another to do or refrain from doing an act is guilty of an offence.

This is really the key here - you are obtaining the money on the pretence that the person is guaranteed to get more money in return. It's a pyramid scheme, so this is a fallacy. Pyramid schemes rely on the fact that at some point near the peak of the scheme, you run out of suckers. At this point, everyone joining the scheme pays in money, but gets little or nothing back because there's no-one joining behind them and paying in money.

I would be very interested to know whether the law could do anything about it, if the mail laid it right on the line, "i.e. You may get money out of this scheme, but it is a pyramid scheme so there's an equal chance that you will pay money and get nothing back.".

You can argue that it's a small amount of money, but because of the growth pattern of pyramid schemes, it's a few million small amounts of money, which equates to a large chunk of money stolen from the public. Think of it in terms of robbing a bank of €30 million. If the bank has 10 million customers, then you can say that you're only taking €3 off each customer. But it's still €30 million stolen.

Maple

AlmightyCushion wrote:

It was in a couple of forums. I wish these spamming cunts would fuck off. :mad:

+ 1

MOH

As long as you send out your emails to people whom are likely to be
interested in this program, then you can expect on average a response
of around 25%. But let's be extremely conservative and assume that the
average response rate is 12.5%!

Hello, I'm mailing you to determine whether you are likely to be interested in a pyramid scheme scam mail? Can you let me know if you are so I can send it to you and get my response rate up to 25%

Additionally, the above example assumes that each participant will send out only 40 emails. Imagine what would happen if each participant sent out 1000 emails instead!

Imagine what would happen if you took a less conservative estimate of 95% responses, and each participant sent out 58 trillion emails instead!

You end up with 10,280 gazillion pounds !!!!

Spyral

so.. anyone wanna give me E3 ?

seamus

Actually, doing a few sums, this could be shortest pyramid scheme in history.

He mentions 75 million users, but let's be generous and say there are 100 million, and every single one of them takes part in this, does it honestly, and nobody receives the mail twice.

Let's assume that it begins with five people (five email addresses, each person puts their name at the top of the list and randomly arranges the rest).
They will send it to 200 people. Who then send it to 8000 people. and so on.
By the time you're moving onto the 6th level, it will have already hit saturation point. So anybody who joined after the original five, will not receive any money. The original five will receive around $45 million each, and nobody else gets anything. Nice.

You fell for it didn't ya?