Part 2: the Rich Get Richer

Tuesday afternoon, a couple of hours after posting about my secret underworld dealings in central Africa, I got an email from Mr. Anthony Flower, "Foreign Services Manager" from the eminently respectable UK National Lottery. The message had this tasteful graphic at the top:

Yeah, that just oozes credibility.

And it read, in part, as follows:

Your e-mail address attached to Ticket Number ______ drew the Winning Numbers:_______, which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.e match 3 plus bonus.

You didn't think I was actually going to share those numbers, did you? What do think I am, an idiot? to continue:

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £1,750,000.00 (One Million Seven Hundred And Fifty Thousand Pounds sterling) in cash credited to your file. . . For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.

This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned.

Oh, God forbid there be unwarranted abuse. Typically greedy yet ignorant Americano that I am, I have no idea how much that would be in real money, but it must be a lot. After all, 1.75 million pounds of anything is really, really heavy.

Then yesterday, I got a second message from "Professor Alex Smith Chambers" of the United Kingdom telling me that:

...your funds of US $15 Million has been approved for immediate delivery to you.

It was nice of Prof. Chambers to give me a number in real money. It was even nicer to give me fifteen million bucks for no apparent reason. No scams, no winning lottery numbers, just a nice British chap who wants to give me a shitload of money.

Not that I'm ungrateful to all these people, but I do have to wonder. What is it about me that makes random strangers want to give me their fortunes? And why did I become such a rockstar in England in the last three days?

Maybe this blog is getting more popular than I thought...