Who wants to be a millionaire?
Reputable companies would never ask for banking details telephonically.
YAY! Virtually every single staff member at the Herald became rich this week. Thanks to Telkom, SARS, Microsoft, Apple, Coke and several other big companies, we all have hundreds of thousands of rand just waiting for us to collect.
All we have to do is forward our banking details to Mr Mark, Mrs Nomsa Khumalo, Mr Etheridge and Mr Goldman, who are obviously the very kindly financial people charged with distributing the generosity of the world’s corporates.
We actually followed up on one SMS this week (072 9897051) and got through to ‘Mr Mark’ who assured us that it was all true. Our reporter’s mobile phone number had been drawn in an annual ‘Rica promotion’.
Mr Mark gave our reporter a reference number which she should keep ‘secret’, just in case someone else claimed the prize. The man asked for banking details, but our reporter said she didn’t know them off-hand. He then settled for an address and promised the cheque would be ‘in the post’.
We are not alone. Virtually everyone we speak to has had a similar windfall of late. It’s laughable to most of us, but the tragedy is that some more gullible (or desperate) people must have fallen for these scams. Why else would the “scamsters” continue doing it if they were not having any success?
To repeat, repeat… repeat what we should all know by now: “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is!”
Bevis Fairbrother
Note: Editor, Colleen Haggard, is currently in the UK on a well-deserved break.
