ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Thursday I got an honest-to-God chain letter in the mail. I thought those things had gone out of vogue in the 80s and had been permanently replaced with Nigerian inheritance scams, but apparently there are still some low-tech scam artists out there doing their thing. If you’re not familiar with these letters, the basic premise of this whole Ponzi type scheme is that you receive a letter that explains what the whole thing is ostensibly all about, and it has a list of six names and addresses on the last page. You’re supposed to mail $1.00 to each of the six people, remove the first name on the list, and add your name to the end. Then you’re supposed to mail the new and improved list to 200 other people. According to the testimonial in the letter, you will then begin receiving money by the boatload in short order. Conveniently the letter also contains a phone number for this company in Illinois (”unaffiliated” OF COURSE) from which you can order a mailing list of names and addresses to try your new “business” out on. The letter even urges you to keep your venture a secret from everyone you know, because they will try to discourage you from your “dream”. The basic theme of the letter is “DON’T LISTEN TO THE COMMON SENSE THAT TELLS YOU THIS IS RETARDED! THE POWER OF EXPONENTS DOES NOT LIE!” One of the funnier parts of the letter claims that the US Postal & Lottery laws, title 18 §1302 and §1342 make this perfectly legal, and the humorous part is that these sections of postal code do specifically reference this exact type of letter and marketing scheme…as being illegal, not to mention mathematically impossible.

I did some of the basic math with this and figured out exactly what would happen in the unlikely event that all the letter’s recipients went along with it, assuming perfect participation and no broken chains. The results strongly suggest that this place in Illinois is actually trying to destroy the world, probably to prime it for takeover or something. The letter explains that roughly 7.5% of people who receive this letter will be gullible enough to actually follow through with the instructions, which should net you about a million dollars in short order. I was thinking, though, at least six people have participated in this particular chain letter—the people on the list. I even checked to make sure they’re real people, and I found their names and addresses (and phone numbers) on Switchboard.com. The possibilities for pranks with something like this are practically endless, although it would probably be wrong to do so. Obviously there’s no way I’m paying to send 200 copies of this stupid thing to other people, and besides, I don’t actually want to bilk them out of their money. But I still kind of want to mail them something. A harmless prank. Sending each of them a $1 money order with a note asking to be removed from their list now that I’ve given them what they asked for could be funny, since a money order would actually be kind of a pain in the ass in that they’d have to a) pay someplace to cash the stupid little $1 money order or b) deposit it to a bank account and waste a deposit slip. Would anybody actually bother with their dinky little money order? That would only cost me $8.34 total if I wanted to do it, since I can get the money orders for free at work. Haha, or I could mail each of them a copy of this and ask them to mail it to the people they sent their chain letter to. That would cost $2.34 for postage.

The other thing I thought of is that these people are obviously willing to participate in a chain letter if they’re already on this list to begin with. So what if I didn’t bother to actually partipate in their chain letter, but I sent them one of my own? “Mail a picture of an animal to each of the six people on the list and add yourself to the bottom. Don’t ask questions, just DO IT!!!!”

Would any of them actually comply? I could include a dumb testimonial about how kids with cancer love to look at animal pictures, or something. I like the idea of seeing if people will participate in a stupid chain letter that doesn’t actually promise them anything in return for whatever totally worthless thing they’re asked to give. I’ll think more on this later. To annoy with money orders, to chastise with Postal Inspection letters, or to confuse with a totally different chain letter? Tough call.