The Money Trap

Kudos to TOI’s timing. Exactly a day after I read a detailed article on Online Lottery Frauds, I saw a mail in my inbox congratulating me over my success in some Lotto, which I had never heard of. Had the article not been printed the day before, I would have been flushing with happiness and weaving dreams in my mind about how to spend the “not so small” amount. The email said:

As soon as I read the contents of this promising mail, I came to know in no time that it was a fake one. But still, in order to satiate my highly optimistic mind, I set out in the search of “Ms. Linna Martins”, the “Information Minister” of “God knows what country”, on Google. And not very surprisingly, a lot of search results showed up on the screen with a common term “fraud” in each of them. Soon the tides of joyous excitement calmed down and a feeling of resentment took over. What the heck, where do these desperate people dig out our email IDs from? Why doesn’t the cyber crime cell keep a tab of them? I was cussing the sender for arousing false hopes of monetary gains in me.

I don’t usually give in to the temptation of winning a lottery or any sort of freebie because I know that money does not come easy. A lot of offers appear these days through TV, newspapers, SMSs which claim to win you free gifts, movie tickets, cars, ipods, music systems, gold, cash etc. Some of us, perhaps, one out of a million, may, emerge as truly lucky but the truth is that most of us tend to lose huge sums playing with our fortune. I must admit that I have myself lost quite a few bucks through SMSs hoping to win a free movie ticket.

Recently, when I was flipping through the TV channels, my hands stopped at a channel which was asking the viewers to guess a celebrity, whose eyes they were flashing across the TV screen, for Rs 40,000. It was utterly ludicrous and nonsensical, since it was too easy to answer but despite this fact, a lot of people were shown calling in and answering incorrectly. Even my “not so Bollywood aware" mom could answer it in a fraction of a second. And to add to the funny part, the host of the program was urging callers to hold on the line; for “Unless you are ready to wait, you won’t win”. I am sure they must be fishing out a lot of rupees from the audiences’ pockets through their calling charges. The deceit was too obvious.

So don’t get into the trap, just remember, no one would give you a single penny free in this materialistic world unless you are extraordinarily lucky, whose chances are, again, very rare.