🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Feb5.183400.25285@tellab5.tellabs.com>, jstein@tellabs.com (Jeff Steinhauer) writes:
> 
> 	Yesterday I received a letter in the mail stating that if
> I would send $10.00 to the address listed below they would send me
> info on how send first class mail for 6 cents.
> 
> 	Does anyone have any experience w/this or has anyone heard
> about this 6 cent first class mailings??

That's one of the oldest scams around. You didn't mention it, but I
assume that the letter arrived with a 6-cent stamp on it, too, as
"proof" that it works. Mail them ten bucks and you most likely will
receive absolutely nothing.

The way they do it is simple: they purchase a quantity of 6-cent stamps
and a mailing list (or pull addresses from the phone book, or whatever).
They prepare the mailing, stick 6-cent stamps on the outside and dump
the underpaid postage in the mail, often from various locations so that
their insufficient-postage stuff gets well-mixed with the regular mail.
Chances are that at least some of their mail will get through to a
recipient. The letters that ARE spotted by the Post Office usually are
unreturnable (for insufficient postage) because there's no return address
on them. Any curious P.O. official who opens the letter and tries to
track down the address for payments to be sent to usually finds just a
mail-drop outfit (who knows nothing about the guy picking up the mail),
a recently-vacated apartment or a recently-closed post office box.

Note that all "acceptable" forms of payment for this thing are in the
form of cash-and-run transactions requiring little in the way of iden-
tification and no holding time on the checks (cashier's only).

No offense, Jeff, but it seems like you've got on to a mailing list
known as a "sucker list", circulated among sleazy outfits and individ-
uals who run these sorts of scams. All it takes is for you to enter one
mail-in contest, or fill out one "Win a Free Corvette" timesharing entry
in a restaurant somewhere, or mail ten bucks to some preacher, and Boom!
You'll get all kinds of stuff like that. Some of it's pretty entertaining,
but most of it gets depressing eventually. After all, there are people
out there who really do fall for this stuff.

Andrew C. Green
Datalogics, Inc.      Internet: acg@dlogics.com
441 W. Huron          UUCP: ..!uunet!dlogics!acg
Chicago, IL  60610    FAX: (312) 266-4473