Bill Gates Giving Away Money?!!!
I received an e-mail today from a trusted friend of mine of which claimed that Bill Gates was sharing his wealth!!
Here’s what it said:
“This thing is for real. Rest assured AOL and Intel will follow through with their promises for fear of facing a multi-million dollar class action suit similar to the one filed by Pepsi Co against General Electric not too long ago.
Dear Friends; Please do not take this as a junk letter. Bill Gates sharing his fortune. If you ignore this, you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.
When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (If you are a Microsoft Windows user). For a two week time period.
For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check.
Regards
Charles S Bailey General Manager
Field Operations
1-800-842-2332 Ext. 1085 or 904-1085
or RNX
292-1085
It further states:
“I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, Microsoft contacted me for my address and within days I received a check for $24,800.00. You need to respond before the beta test is over. If anyone can afford this, Bill Gates is the man.
It’s all marketing expense to him. Please forward this to as many people as possible. You are bound to get at least $10,000.00. We’re not going to help them out with their e-mail beta test without getting a little something for our time. My brother’s girlfriend got in on this a few months ago. When I went to visit him for the Baylor U/T game, she showed me her check. It was for the sum of $4,324.44 and was stamped ‘Paid in full’.”
This e-mail continues further but I just got bored of it!!
Firstly, Bill Gates has better things to do than a stupid ‘e-mail marketing campaign’!!
I googled this e-mail and guess? It is a scam!! It is one of the biggest hoax e-mails circulating the Internet. These have been around for a good while now but come in different formats but all claiming that Bill Gates is giving away his ‘hard earned’ cash!!
As for tracking e-mails that’s rubbish too!! Not only would it be breaking and violating privacy issues but I think Bill Gates’s Inbox will be pretty full without having to respond to all these other e-mails!!
I find it quite amusing (also annoying!!) that so many people fall for this kind of hoax and although I feel it is not too malicious as it isn’t a virus but that it reflects how desperate some people are to earn ‘easy money’!!
As my mum always says to me “You don’t get ‘owt for nowt”!!
I have recieved a fair few scam emails in the past. One saying that I was a lost relative of someone in Africa and was the heir to a fortune. All I had to do was reply with my persona details.
Another which was of more interest was a chain letter. I had to send the author of the letter £10 , photocopy and post the letter to , I can’t remember the exact number of people. I only needed 1% of those people to respond and I would recive £40,000 pounds. Tempting. If only it was that easy eh. Who knows what would have happened if I had followed the instructions to the letter? There must have been someone, at the bottom of the chain benefiting from the scam. Kay
Kay Holdsworth said this on June 6, 2008 at 10:06 am
I agree there has to be somebody profiting from all these scams and I know that the ‘ordinary man’ isn’t one of them!!
Thanks for your comments Kay, I appreciate them!
Anyone with a similar story please share it with us so we can all stay one step ahead of these hoaxers!!
sharon said this on June 6, 2008 at 2:48 pm
i have received this email twice from two friends of mine. Same story, that Bill gates is sharing money. The thing is that most of the comments inside the chain are from people mentioning different amounts. Thats interesting. But as always, I simply deleted it. The money which i earn on my own with my own effort is the one i will ever get. I dont believe in these easy money schemes.
Abdul Haseeb Ahmed said this on July 30, 2008 at 9:26 am
It was on good morning america….
shari said this on February 2, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Sad but true, so many are desperate!!! Desperately Lazy! Naive people wander around in a fog and believe that money is just going to drop out of the sky because someone said so. Ridiculous. These are the same people that listen to our liberal biased media and believe everything that they hear just because it was in the paper or on the news. WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! Do your own research…Get the facts man…Don’t be an AIR HEAD. You are the ones that are responsible for the trouble Mr. Obama and his left leaning clan are causing this once great country. Do as the Romans do? To your own demise! Look around the country and the world. Romans? Not far from it. Stand up, be strong. Adhere to moral and ethical principals. Love your fellow man, don’t act like him. AND DON’T BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE UNLESS IT HAS LOGICAL FACT BASED SUPPORT THAT YOU FOUND FROM YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
Rusty Freeman said this on July 27, 2009 at 8:32 pm
I did research to confirm the the hole MSN AOL merger is a Hoax.
If you check out the link I have attached underneath it confirms the Email has been circulating since 1999.
I keep receiving the same Email from a friends wife year after year and she did not receive a penny.
When you get the Email scam, count how many Email address are in the message, When a spammer receives the mail with all the Email addresses, it is like winning the lotto for them. They literally have hundreds of new addresses to send their junk to. If a hand full of those hundreds fall for their Spam, they could make a pretty penny.
PS. SHARI. What episode , what is the date of the time Good morning America did the story????? Can you send us a youtube link of the episode???? DID YOU SEE IT??? Or are you one of the people who wants the BS myth to continue for some reason???
Just asking
J.S said this on October 11, 2009 at 4:58 am
OUPS. Forgot to add the Link to the website for the MSN AOL Bill giving money Hoax.
Here it is
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blmsaol.htm
J.S said this on October 11, 2009 at 5:00 am
Rusty, what in the world does this have to do with “Liberal Media”… That comment was about as dumb as this chain letter.
bakari k said this on November 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm