My "Winnings" and "Inheritances" Update

Take a look at the dollar total in the right-hand-side of this blog. That number is the running total of how much I am told that I have either "won" or "inherited" since I started keeping track of it in January 2009.

As I write this, I just updated that total to be:

$37,135,922,034.73

That is just over thirty seven Billion USD.

Of course I haven't actually won or inherited anything. That should be obvious. This is based on messages sent by criminals who hope I will believe I won or inherited money, so that they can then tell me to wire them "fees" to ensure the money gets sent to me.

When I first started tabulating this, it was meant to be a one year experiment to see how much I would have "won" if I took seriously the claims of every one of the Nigerian scam emails I receive on a daily basis.

Within the first full year of tabulating, I had "won / inherited" $15,010,243,226.36. (Fifteen Billion USD.) On average I was "winning" 20 - 40 million dollars every single day. I arrived at my first Billion USD of tabulated winnings on Jan. 14th, 2009. The next on Jan. 27th. On average, I was winning a Billion dollars every two to three weeks.

Fast forward to 2010 and what a difference a year makes.

I "won" the equivalent of all I won in 2009 within the first two months of 2010, hitting $30,452,821,816.30 on March 3rd. I now routinely receive from 50 - 90 of these messages every single day. There has never been a single day where I have not received any Nigerian scam messages claiming I have won the "Microsoft Lottery", the "Toyota Lottery", the "Yahoo / Microsoft Lottery", the "Euro Powerball Lottery" or any of the other so-called lotteries these morons keep promoting.

I'm not sure why, suddenly, after new year's eve the volume on this particular type of spam experienced such a drastic spike, but it's officially reached what any normal email recipient would have to think was a ridiculous level.

To the idiots sending this spam: if you send the same "YOU HAVE WON!!!1!!" message more than once a year? People will think you are stupid. More than once a month? Come on.

But several times a day?

Every single day?

How often do people seriously think they can win a lottery?!

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be that at least one person does, because I don't see this trend ending anytime soon.

Some more stats in case anyone out there needs further proof of how utterly stupid the criminals are that send these messages:

- Per day, I now win or inherit around $224 million dollars. Every day.
- The lowest amount I have won in a single day this year: $8,833,127.56.
- The highest amount: $1,726,677,256.77 (That was last week.)
- On average I am winning a Billion dollars every 2 - 5 days. In mid-February it was literally every single day that I was winning one Billion dollars.

Who needs a stimulus package?

I think there greatly needs to be further education of the general, non-tech-savvy public, because as the saying goes, if it didn't work, we wouldn't be seeing this spam.

I'm frankly tired of seeing "soft" news stories about otherwise smart people who get duped into these scams. Literally every one of them ends with the same epilogue: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

I've got a better line they should start using: "Are you high?!"

Seriously: does anyone really believe that they are actually the "winner" of a lottery every other day?

At this rate, I can't even guess how high this will go. My existing projection tells me that based on today's date, and the average I am winning / inheriting every single day, I will reach the following total on Dec. 31st of this year:


$107,498,721,679.48

Or: nearly one hundred and eight Brillion dollars.

If you found this blog posting while looking to see if "your email has won you $10,000,000.00!!!!!!11!!", please read this:

Use your brain.

No lottery in the world will notify you by email, and they will not require you to ever PAY them any money. Use your brain.

The only way you win a lottery is on the off chance (alleged to be one in several billion) that your number, which you payed for at a lottery booth, has won. Your email address cannot "win" anything. Use your brain.

Similarly, you are very unlikely to be notified at random via email when some long-lost alleged relative has died and left you an inheritance.

But most importantly:

You won't win a lottery or inherit hundreds of millions of dollars every single day. You just won't.

SiL / IKS / concerned citizen