Well that was a pleasant surprise. One of the richest people in the world wants to give me five million dollars.
Clicking through my emails last week, there among the notices the Thursday Reading Club was giving its annual scholarship and a photo of young pianists performing for the Matinee Musical Club was one from the founder of Microsoft.
Yep, Mr. Bill Gates. And that’s what he called himself, Mr. Bill Gates.
He apparently does not know in The Reporter’s style book, “Mr.” is only used in second reference in obituaries.
Now you may scoff, but I think this really is from Bill Gates for a number of reasons as follows:
• He said it was.
• It was from the Internet and we know nobody gets misled there.
• He probably liked my recent column where I revealed Shakespeare was actually a third baseman for the New York Mets.
• It says right there in the email “our information below is 100 percent legitimate.”
• He spelled his name in capital letters.
• When he refers to himself as a billionaire, he spells it with a capital B—Billionaire. That’s class.
• He provides a link to the web page of the actual Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Or at least he said it was. I’m not clicking on it. I may use this situation to write a—hopefully—amusing column, but the bottom line is, I was born at night but it wasn’t last night.)
Besides you can tell his heart is in the right place. I’m one of 10 lucky individuals and he wants us to donate our $5-million to charity.
Why? Well, as Bill says—I guess we are on a first-name basis even though he does not appear to know my name—he has realized his mortality.
“I am not getting any younger,” he writes, “and you can imagine having no (sic) much time to live.”
Even though he is a Billionaire, he apparently cannot afford to hire proof readers.
I decided a long time ago to treat these things by finding the humor in them and there’s plenty in this email from “Bill Gates.”
You can see the “trying too hard syndrome” at work.
This scammer in a coffee shop in Lagos or Kingston or Copenhagen or—for all I know—Hutto isn’t content to just throw it all out there and hope somebody bites, he or she thinks it will be more effective if they go for the heartstrings.
You see, the Gateses are dying and want to do what they can with their money while there is still time.
They are traveling to Germany for “Treatment,” another capital for no reason. Bill is writing this from a hospital computer.
Did you get that? Bill Gates has to borrow a computer to send an email. That’s like the Sahara Desert borrowing sand.
He needs my name in order to send me the money even though he said he found me in the first place when he saw my profile on the “Microsoft email owners list.”
There’s no such thing.
Besides, you think Bill Gates couldn’t find out my name if he wanted to?
Amusing as it all is, there’s a real-life sad side to this kind of thing, which is, after all, a crime waiting to happen.
I think, sadly, of a lady who came in The Reporter a few years ago when I was minding the front, going “what cash register key do I press!?”
She had received a scam where someone would “send her money” if she would supply them with her personal info. She was going to send a fax to do just that.
I tried to be as polite as possible, refused to send it and tried to reason with her. “I just can’t be a part of something where someone is going to try and steal your money,” I pleaded.
I hoped she would get mad, and she did. At me.
I’m sure she went off somewhere and found another place to send the fax. Although I hope not.
The irony is, Bill and Melinda Gates actually do a lot of meaningful and compassionate charity work.
This isn’t part of it.
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