There is a Real Life Chance You Have A $200K Email Sitting In Your Spam Folder Right Now
GaudiLab. Getty Images.NY Post - A Michigan woman discovered that she won a $207,199 lottery prize from a suspicious-looking email in her spam folder.
The 54-year-old winner from Macomb County, who chose to remain anonymous, initially dismissed the email because she did not realize that her name had automatically been entered for the drawing of the BIG CA$H Second Chance Jackpot prize.
“I didn’t know that by playing certain games online I was earning entries into a second chance drawing, so I was confused when I came across an email from the Michigan Lottery in my spam folder saying I’d won a $207,199 BIG CA$H Second Chance jackpot prize,” the woman told the Michigan Lottery.
I probably should have prefaced that title with, "If you play any of those weird lottery backed money making phone games that show up as advertisements along the side of shady websites…"
Those are the types of games this woman was playing. I'm pretty sure those are the only types of games that enter you into a BIG CA$H Second Chance Jackpot. But if you're one of those people who saw an, 'I make $1,378 per week playing slot machine games on my phone!' advertisement and thought to yourself, "Fuck it. My life sucks. Might as well give it a rip."… then proceeded to lose $30 in 5 minutes… Well you may have been entered into a contest. You may have even won the contest. You could have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in your spam folder right now.
As stupid as that sounds, if it happened to this woman, you know there are people out there with legitimate winning emails sitting untouched in their spam folder. I can't help but that Gmail (or whichever email service she uses) dropped the ball on this one. Those winning emails must expire at some point. Imagine you found out that you missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars because Google decided your inbox was cluttered enough as is. I'd be livid. There has to be a lawsuit there. I'd be lawyering up immediately.
But more importantly… the only reason I'm writing this blog… is because this story reminds me of something I'd like to do if I ever fall into several billion dollars. It's a social experiment of sorts. Here's how it goes. First, I send out a series of those Nigerian Prince emails.
Geetings Beloved Friend,
I know this message with receive you with surprise, but allow me a proposition of business. I am Good Luck Joshua, descendant of the Maswati King of Easter, supporter of the commonwealth and rightful heir to the great Christmas fortune of Port Harcout. I'm stuck on top of a giraffe and need USD 10,000$.
Please I will offer you return of 10000% for your urgent assistance.
Something along those lines. I'm still workshopping the email but you get the point. I send it out to thousands of people. Everyone with a brain assumes it's just another classic Nigerian Prince scam. But the surprise twist is that I actually send the money. I put aside $100M. The first 100 people to wire me $10,000 receive $1M the next day.
Now I've muddied the waters. Word gets out that one of the Nigerian Prince emails is real. Naturally, real scammers will take advantage of this. They'll start using the Nigerian Prince email format to scam people for real, because people now have reason to believe they could be legitimate. Every time people receive one they'll have to decide if it's worth the $10K risk. Are they being scammed, or are they a Venmo away from being a millionaire? It'll be like playing the lottery.
I guess that's not really a social experiment. It's more just causing chaos for my own amusement. Honestly, it would make for a pretty good Netflix show. Imagine the interviews you'd get from the idiots who actually "fell for it". Just the dumbest most gullible people in the world becoming millionaires as a result of their poor decision making. That's America baby. If only Mr. Beast wasn't in a pedophile scandal right now, I feel like this would be right up his alley.
Anyways, I think we can all agree the morale of this story is that when you receive a shady email in your spam folder saying that you've won a prize, you should always see it through. No matter what personal information they're asking for.