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Too Much Free Time

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Jan 15th 2007 12:11pm





But What If Some Random Stranger Really Does Want To Give You Money?

from the first-assumption:-scam dept

We've all heard so many stories about various Nigerian 419 "advance fee" scams where someone claims they want to give you money from some wealthy stranger who died, but what happens when that sort of situation actually does happen? Fark has an amusing story about an eccentric Portuguese bachelor, who apparently decided to leave his fortune to 70 strangers he chose at random from the phone book. That alone, of course, is bizarre. However, the article also notes that many of the recipients believed it must be a scam. At least that suggests that people are naturally becoming skeptical of these types of things -- and if it inconveniences the executors of random wills from wacky eccentrics, that's probably a small price to pay.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    dorpus, Jan 15th, 2007 @ 12:20pm

    Strangers have the best candy

    Just like the way Toblerone dumped a lot of chocolate in the US for free, because it was illegal to sell them in Europe after Chernobyl?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    syn_ack, Jan 15th, 2007 @ 1:17pm

    News Why?

    "drew up his unusual will in 1988 in front of two witnesses at a Lisbon registry office, 13 years before he died of natural causes"

    Guy died in 2001. This is six year old news????

     

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  3.  
    identicon
    Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased), Jan 15th, 2007 @ 1:26pm

    Re: Strangers have the best candy

    Just like when dorpus left an irrelevant post!

    If the guy really wanted to randomly share his money he would do a little more than call the people. Maybe meet them personally and show them that he put them in the will. But, from the article, it looks like it may have been his aim to confuse people. Laughing from the afterlife!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    misanthropic humanist, Jan 15th, 2007 @ 3:33pm

    please help me

    This is quite an astonishing and fortunate coincidence. As the recipient of the emails detailed by the honourable Mike Thompson on the internet site Techdirt.com I must approach you most humbly today for assistance in a mutual business transaction. I am Misanthropic Humanist a resident of the county of Avon in the dominion of her Britanic Majestys nation of England. Having been given the opportunity to be appointed the recipient of a conserable sum of money from a random stranger and now by virtue of my present position, it is an opportunity for me to share with you this proposition.

    Following this development, I now have deposited in the Bank of England a sum of some Twenty Million Pounds Sterling. Regretfully due to demands of officials of this country in their capacity as Officers of the Inland Revenue I must move this capital to a financial institution in the United States of America post haste....

    yadda yadda

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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