Funny Postal Scam

The Lazy Human’s Guide to Wealth
Typed from Bong Bong Issue 13

One day, I got this letter. It had no return address or name but just said: “I don’t have any psychic powers, but I appear to be right about the future a whole lot of the time. I am going to tell you who I think is going to win the ball game next Monday between the XXX and the YYY. Watch the game, read the papers. Next week I will send you another letter with another prediction.”

The letter was right. A few days later I got another correct prediction: “As you see I was right. This week, just for the fun of it, in the second game of the double header between the AAA and the BBB, BBB will win.”

Soon, I got more correct predictions until it was four games in a row. This was immpresive. The next letter was different: “This is your last free prediction. I hope you make good use of it. You are a fool if you do not use it properly. Impress your friends. Whatever. Anyway, CCC will beat DDD in Cinicinnati this week. There’s never any guarantee that I will be right but I have been right four times in a row. THERE WAS NO LUCK INVOLVED ON MY PART. I know exactly what I am doing. Some would say it’s occult powers, that I am in touch with the darkness. But it is no such thing. The system I have discovered works with mathematical certainty. Has anybody ever given you such a string of readily checked, specific short-term predictions? If you want one more prediction made by the same methods, send $1000, cash, by U.S Mail to Box 5126, before August 12th … You can figure out how to get your money back quickly!”

I’ve told this as if I received the letters, actually, I’d rather send them. I love this scam, since a lot of your victims actually make money on the deal and you can come back for more later. And you do it while on vacation for a month or so, you can play this racket with ball games, whether the stock market will go up or down, or any other events with simple outcomes anybody can look up. Playoffs and World series time (if you can work fast: try this stunt with home fax numbers) are good. hockey fans are more gullible than most.

Here’s how it works. Go on vaction somewhere far from where you live, get someone you meet at a bar to rent you a post office box. Give them twice as much as the box costs and tell them it’s for love-letters and you don’t want your live in partner to know. Send out 1000 letters, half of which predict one team to win, half the other. Choose names and addresses from the phone book, from areas that have likely marks living there. This is the closest thing to hard work in the whole deal cause you have to keep a record of who you sent what to. I cost you maybe $400 for the paper, stamps and stuff.

And you have to wear gloves to keep the fingerprints off and use a sponge to lick the stamps so they can’t get any mouth cells and trace your DNA. I use a computer, but don’t ever save any of the files on the hard disk – use floppies. These I erase with a tape demagnetiser and reformat them. Nobody can read them after that. I also use an ink-jet printer, if it’s got some oddies which can be traced, they disappear when you change the ink cartridge. You want nothing to link you to the letters. An ounce of prevention and all that.

You keep track of the ones you sent the correct prediction to. There’ll be about 500 of them. These suckers get a second letter, and your down another $200. Half of them are going to get the right prediction. Now you get the whole picture. 250 people get the third letter, you’re out another 100 bucks, and for a last $50, you send 125 people a fourth prediction and you’ve got 75 marks who think you’re Nostradamus. You’re down $750 plus the cost of the box and you invest another $25 to send out the 75 letters asking for $1000. You get one sucker and you’re even dollarwise, get two and you’re ahead. Four or five is a good haul. It’s up to you to send out another 75 letters with a fifth prediction, but I like to. You said you would and you haven’t lied yet. Keep a record of only the final winners on a floppy hidden somewhere away from your abode. Half of the marks, if they play their cards right, will win a bundle and if you do get caught, will be great witnesses in court. I mean, the goverment may be able to find one or two people besides the guy who complained who sent you $1000. Maybe not, even you don’t know who they are anymore! But you can find a bunch of guys who’ll swear by you!