Hi Again :)
I have discussed my buddy's personal experience in the previous post. Now I want to share a interesting mass fraud happened in England in 1976. I am very much impressed with the con artist's Math technique though it was easy and of course illegal. People who think that they will never fall for a scam should read this. Now lets jump into the details.
It was August 1976. The time when England football fans were biting their nails for awaited annual sport event Football league season 1976/77. Patricia, a die hard fan of Arsenal received a letter saying
Confident Patricia thought the letter was fake and took it light. Surprisingly Arsenal lost match to Bristol city by 0-1 just like the result said by the letter. After 2 days she received 2nd letter with the similar content:
"Want to know.....free for first 3 days. Day-2 : West Ham United would win today against Queens park Rangers."
Eager Patricia watched the match curiously to find out how accurate the post card result was. Match resulted as the post card said. West Ham United won the match by 1-0. No one expected this victory of West Ham United, because it lost its previous match with Aston villa by 0-4 on first day of league. Astounded Patricia decided to send money once she receives the 3rd free letter and confirms the result is right.
As expected, she received 3rd letter which declared Manchester City as winner in the match against Aston Villa. Actual result 2-0 win by Manchester city was exactly matched with the post card result. She surprised how that person correctly said the 3 results in a row and sent £10 without any second thought to get the remaining matches' results. But she didn't received any letters from that day on wards. Few months later she realized how she was fooled after reading the details about this fraud in news paper.
What really happened??
The trickster did nothing other than using simple mathematical concepts to cheat. Being Royal mail's employee he was able to get around 10k valid addresses and for the first match between Team A & team B he printed 5k letters stating team A's winning and remaining 5k supporting team B. After the first match 5k people received correct results and 5k people wrong result. For the 2nd match between team C and team D, he threw 5k addresses with wrong results into dustbin and again divided correct 5k into 2500 for team C and 2500 for team D.He sent letters to half of the people saying team C would win and for the remaining half he said Team D would win.We can guess the next step for match 3. He filtered out 2500 from 5k and again divided them into 1250 each for team E and team F. He used binary search concept to search money.
That's it, Job done. Patricia who was in the list of people who received all results correctly believed that those results were not arrows in the dark and sent £10.But the only way Patricia could console herself was she was not alone. The exact number was unknown but police expected 30-40% people might replied with money. That was definitely not small amount in those days.
So guys, Be careful if you receive these kind of mails. Because technology is making fraudster's jobs easy.
Meet you with my next blog on "Multi-level marketing or Network Marketing or simply Chain business"
Thank you..
Source: million 2 one on discovery channel
I have discussed my buddy's personal experience in the previous post. Now I want to share a interesting mass fraud happened in England in 1976. I am very much impressed with the con artist's Math technique though it was easy and of course illegal. People who think that they will never fall for a scam should read this. Now lets jump into the details.
It was August 1976. The time when England football fans were biting their nails for awaited annual sport event Football league season 1976/77. Patricia, a die hard fan of Arsenal received a letter saying
"Want to know the results of upcoming Football league matches?? Just send £10 to the following address through post. Results will be posted before the match dates. A result per day will be sent for free for first 3 days. Day-1 : Arsenal would lost in the first match with Bristol city."
Confident Patricia thought the letter was fake and took it light. Surprisingly Arsenal lost match to Bristol city by 0-1 just like the result said by the letter. After 2 days she received 2nd letter with the similar content:
"Want to know.....free for first 3 days. Day-2 : West Ham United would win today against Queens park Rangers."
Eager Patricia watched the match curiously to find out how accurate the post card result was. Match resulted as the post card said. West Ham United won the match by 1-0. No one expected this victory of West Ham United, because it lost its previous match with Aston villa by 0-4 on first day of league. Astounded Patricia decided to send money once she receives the 3rd free letter and confirms the result is right.
As expected, she received 3rd letter which declared Manchester City as winner in the match against Aston Villa. Actual result 2-0 win by Manchester city was exactly matched with the post card result. She surprised how that person correctly said the 3 results in a row and sent £10 without any second thought to get the remaining matches' results. But she didn't received any letters from that day on wards. Few months later she realized how she was fooled after reading the details about this fraud in news paper.
What really happened??
The trickster did nothing other than using simple mathematical concepts to cheat. Being Royal mail's employee he was able to get around 10k valid addresses and for the first match between Team A & team B he printed 5k letters stating team A's winning and remaining 5k supporting team B. After the first match 5k people received correct results and 5k people wrong result. For the 2nd match between team C and team D, he threw 5k addresses with wrong results into dustbin and again divided correct 5k into 2500 for team C and 2500 for team D.He sent letters to half of the people saying team C would win and for the remaining half he said Team D would win.We can guess the next step for match 3. He filtered out 2500 from 5k and again divided them into 1250 each for team E and team F. He used binary search concept to search money.
That's it, Job done. Patricia who was in the list of people who received all results correctly believed that those results were not arrows in the dark and sent £10.But the only way Patricia could console herself was she was not alone. The exact number was unknown but police expected 30-40% people might replied with money. That was definitely not small amount in those days.
So guys, Be careful if you receive these kind of mails. Because technology is making fraudster's jobs easy.
Meet you with my next blog on "Multi-level marketing or Network Marketing or simply Chain business"
Thank you..
Source: million 2 one on discovery channel
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