...It’s that time again, dear friends, for another edition of Dear Mr. Spammer! The first one of 2005… and this one’s timely. In fact, it even has a deadline…

Dear Mr. Spammer,

Today I received a second notice from you about the “prize” that I won in the international lottery that’s worth up to 18 million euros, of which my share is 6 million. While I appreciate that you’re 100% honest about the fact that my email was mistakenly attached to the winning numbers, I don’t think I could accept the generosity of this mistake.

Especially when you consider that I don’t recall emailing *anyone* about any lottery results, international or domestic.

Now, your email goes on to state that I should check for discrepancies in my numbers, but I don’t understand how I could possibly do that when the numbers weren’t mine to begin with due to your error. I suppose I could take advantage of the situation and lie and say the numbers are 100% mine and get my Euros, which translated to US dollars at the current exchange rate would put the prize at somewhere around 7.5 Million US Dollars. Now wouldn’t that be a nice treat for my bank account!

I suppose you know by now that I’m forfeiting the prize since you instructed me not to tell anyone about the prize until after the end of this month because of the mixup in numbers and addresses, and that this is part of the security protocols that you’ve instituted with regards to this whole situation. I can understand that – it’s a very delicate situation when you’ve mixed up the lottery entries of what must be thousands of people for a pot that’s worth over 22 million dollars.

I’m turning down the prize that you’re offering however, especially because you really don’t give a lot of avenues for how to respond, and you don’t give me any instruction as to how to receive the prize in the first place. You’re just going to have to return the monies to the Ministerio De Hacienda (the Property Ministry?).

That’s just too bad though, because I would love to hold a cashier’s cheque for that amount. That would just be…. Outstanding. And the temptation to tear it up would be overwhelming…

…because I’m sure that Monopoly money would be worth more.

Thanks, but no thanks, I think I've got enough money problems as it is.
-WG-