The Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation

This is a scam which popped up in late 1997. It's made a resurgence in the past thirty days.

The scam is promoted exclusively via e-mail spamming. You've gotten it if you've received an e-mail message with the title:

What "THEY" Don't Want You To Find Out!!

That certainly sounds intriguing. What on earth could this refer to? What are we just not supposed to find out? That MasterCard and VISA actually are the same company and are finally going to admit it after all these years? Whether Tom Cruise will come out of the closet? Those people who actually read spam (and I suspect that these are the same people who are responsible for keeping Touched By An Angel on the air for so long) open it to find the story of the World Currency Cartel. After you read some enticing, yet grammatically ambiguous, quotes from the NBC Nightly News ("Members of 'World Currency Cartel', who always keep a low profile, are considered to be some of the most wealthiest [sic] people in North America"), the New York Times ("In concluding our review of Financial [sic] organizations to effect [sic] change in the 90's...") and other sources, you learn that the World Currency Cartel has quite a deal for you:

We are glad to announce that for the first time and for a very short period of time, WORLD CURRENCY CARTEL will instruct a LIMITED number of people worldwide on 'HOW TO CONVERT $25 INTO ONE HUNDRED OF LEGAL CURRENCY'. We will transact the first conversion for you, after that you can easily and quickly do this on your own hundreds or even thousands of times every month.

You are then told that due to a "secret flaw,"

While currency does fluctuate daily, we can show you 'HOW TO CONVERT $99 INTO $588 AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT'. That means, you will be able to EXCHANGE $99, AMERICAN LEGAL CURRENCY DOLLARS, FOR $580 OF THE SAME. You can do this as many times as you wish, every day, every week, every month. All very LEGAL and effortlessly!

You can read the entire text of the spam here. Later on, we learn a bit more about the background of the WCC:

We at the World Currency Cartel would like to see a uniform global currency backed by Gold. But, until then, we will allow a LIMITED number of individuals worldwide to share in the UNLIMITED PROFITS provided for by the world currency differentials.

So, you get the idea -- they're implying that by a flaw in the global monetary system, one can make a series of currency exchanges and somehow, via a final step of converting your money back into US dollars, end up with more money than you started out with. And -- although these people are obviously quite wealthy and can do this any time, they want to tell YOU how to do it for only $35.00.

So how does it work?

It's actually a very old con, wearing a flashy new outfit. You've probably seen classified ads (particularly in weekly newspapers which cover otherwise-overlooked stories such as bat boys terrorizing West Virginia and the third return of Christ this week) -- and, from time to time, e-mail and Usenet spams -- which look something like the following:

"Make huge money stuffing envelopes! $5 per envelope stuffed! How to have your mailbox overflowing with $5 bills! Make hundreds a week! For details, send $5 to GET STUFFED, PO Box 123, Rock Springs, WY."

This is, of course, the classic envelope-stuffing scheme. When you send the loser in Wyoming your five bucks, all you get back is a few sheets of paper instructing you to run the same ad. Then, when additional losers send you their five bucks, you "stuff" an envelope with a copy of the same instructions. This, like chain letters and similar scams, is a victim-spread scam. The envelope-stuffing scam survives because most people who send off their $5, upon learning how the plan really works, resort simply to smacking themselves on the head, going to the fridge to get another beer, and turning on the TV to watch a ball game. Scammers count on the fact that most victims won't consider it worth the $5 to ask for their money back, or that they'll be too embarrassed to go to the authorities. However, a small portion of the recipients are of the personality type (behavioral psychologists refer to this class of people as "dickweeds") which causes them, upon receipt of the letter, to utter something to the effect of "This is a nutty idea, but it JUST MIGHT WORK!" and then proceed with opening up their own PO box and replicating the scam.

The World Currency Cartel scam works just like this.

The spam states:

WORLD CURRENCY CARTEL will instruct a LIMITED number of people worldwide on 'HOW TO CONVERT $25 INTO ONE HUNDRED OF LEGAL CURRENCY'. We will transact the first conversion for you, after that you can easily and quickly do this on your own hundreds or even thousands of times every month.

What's missing from the above sentence is the word "Dollars" after "One Hundred."

So, what do you get when you send $35.00 (or, in some versions, $30.00 or even $25.00) to the PO box listed in the WCC spam? You may not get anything. Several people have reported sending money off to them and never hearing from them again. One sucker reported receiving nothing after sending $25 to a PO box in Florida after reading a full-page ad in a "business opportunities" magazine found in an airport. That ad was a word-for-word copy of the spammed ad.

If you're lucky, when you send them your money, you get back one hundred units of currency from some far-away land where they still sell leaded gasoline and the water may or may not be drinkable -- perhaps from a backward, third-world country like Suriname or Canada. You might get a hundred Burundian Francs, which have a total value of about twenty-five cents.

Next, the spam promises:

While currency does fluctuate daily, we can show you 'HOW TO CONVERT $99 INTO $588 AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT'. That means, you will be able to EXCHANGE $99, AMERICAN LEGAL CURRENCY DOLLARS, FOR $580 OF THE SAME. You can do this as many times as you wish, every day, every week, every month. All very LEGAL and effortlessly!

Those of you who were in the MGM or GATE program in elementary school have already figured out how they expect you to do this: by replicating the scam! It works like this:

• You rent a PO box.
• You spam the ad.
• When suckers mail you their $35.00, you go to the bank and buy, say, $100 in Guinea-Bissau Pesos, which will cost you somewhat less than the price of a Snickers bar.
• You mail the suckers $100 Guinea-Bissau Pesos each, along with a copy of the instructions you received.
• You emit a fiendish cackle and go spend the $35.00 on a Playstation game.

So, like the plain, boring version of the envelope-stuffing scheme, it's victim-spread.

Various addresses have been used for this scheme, all PO boxes in Post Offices or Mailboxes Etc. types of places. Back in late 1997 and again in March of 1998, suckers were instructed to send their money to:

In March of '98, copies went out with a request to send money to:

Some 'net users also reported getting spam with the same address on Santa Monica Boulevard, but with the Diamond International name, and not Wealth Exchange International.

Another recipient of the spam back in 1997 reported the following address:

Of course. Everybody knows that the place to find world currency movers and shakers is Roselle Park, New Jersey.

In 1998, more spams started appearing with addresses in New Jersey:

And another:

Interestingly, all three of these addresses in New Jersey are bona fide Post Office PO boxes, not boxes operated by a private enterprise. This might be evidence that it's being operated by the same person. Some versions of the New Jersey letter have this at the end:

We thankfully credit DIAMOND INT. for the content of this IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.

How successful is it? It's been popping up from time to time at least as far back as 1990. The Orange County Register covered this very scam on April 25th, 1990. That's right -- an Orange County resident involved in financial fraud. Go figure! Here's a real media quote on the World Currency Cartel that apparently hasn't made it into their spammage:

A sister business, the World Currency Cartel, uses apparently bogus references from The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and others attesting to its plan for making big money from loopholes in foreign-exchange markets, authorities said. Authorities estimate the two businesses have pulled in more than $ 1 million from investors around the country and in Canada, at $ 25 or $ 33 a pop.

Attempts to reach the companies for comment were unsuccessful.

Both businesses, which use private postal drop boxes across Southern California, including Orange County, have caught the eye of the local US Postal Inspection Service for their use of the fake media coverage.

And yet, somebody's back in business with the same old scam.

To make things even more fun, a person calling themselves the "World Currency Cartel" -- I have no idea if it's the same person -- has also tried another scam. You can read the pitch here. It appears to work the same way; to make any money, you sell the secret. Again, it's envelope-stuffing.

There are apparently at least three people involved in the scam -- our friend in southern California, our friend in New Jersey, and then some guy in Miami who may or may not also be pitching the same scam. A few netizens who've sent off their money have attempted to recoup some of their investment by perpetuating the scam, but have changed their minds. According to the search engines, this page used to be titled "Good News from the Global Currency Exchange" and apparently contained the WCC letter; now he's using it to hawk Streamline International, and I was able to track down a fellow in Canada who was apparently trying to spread the WCC spam for a short time.

So what about the "secret flaw" that the original spam repeatedly mentions? Although it's heavily implied, nowhere does the spammer explicitly state that this is a "secret flaw" in the currency exchange process. The secret flaw to which the spammer refers is probably that flaw in human nature which ensures that scams like this will continue to proliferate throughout all eternity: That flaw is called "being a sucker."