These scammers play on our vanity, using a made-up award to try to get us to fork out cash.
I love Lovemoney. But I realise I am just one of the many cogs working together to make the site what it is.
So why did I get an email from the United States informing me that I had been made an “official honoree” not just for my work here, but for (it seems) everything else?
You have been selected!
At first I was pleased, perhaps even a little flattered. Everyone likes to win awards and gain recognition.
The email started with “Congratulations” - I had been selected as an “official honoree”, even though I don't know what this means.
But looking closer, there was a visible deflation on my part. It mentioned the “exceptional qualify of submissions”, although I had submitted nothing and I know no one else put anything in for me for a US award that nobody has ever heard of.
It got worse. I discovered that being an honoree was only the third level of glory, ranking behind "winners” and “nominees”. It appears that being in my category meant that I was in the top 15% of all entries, and it seems that there were over 20,000. Doing the maths, that meant I was somewhere in the top 3,000 or so, which is not so special. Of course, I don't know who the other competitors were.
Still, the email, which came from a mailbox address in Los Angeles, told me my honoree rank was “a remarkable achievement” and an “outstanding accomplishment for you”.
Here comes the money...
So where is the money bit? This far, there is just a letter that says I am in the top 3,000 for something thanks to my weekly blog on Lovemoney.
Then comes the cash appeal. As an official honoree, I am allowed to purchase special commemorative certificates to give to my friends, colleagues and family. They are hand produced by a calligrapher who is apparently one of the world's best known – in business for some two centuries. I find little to back this claim or to see any of its work online. Maybe, as it has been around since the early 1800s, no one has thought to set up a website. Each certificate would cost me $65 plus overseas postage and packing.
But then I was lucky that I was not higher up the winner order. If I had been, to collect my award I would have to pay a further $250 for “validation of my authenticity” - presumably to ensure I did not copy everything – plus $400 a head to attend an awards ceremony in California. There were special hotel deals available too.
Admittedly, this is not the nastiest scam. It appeals to vanity, but if you fall for this, you could waste a lot of money. There is simply no way of checking how many “official honorees” there are and how many categories exist.
A new version of an old scam
It's the internet-age equivalent of the old “reference book” scam. Here, the scam operators would look you up and work out, for instance, that you do charitable good work where you live in conservation or with animals. They then write to you and say you will appear in a forthcoming “International World Yearbook of Conservation Specialists” or a “Universal Annual of Friends of Four-footed friends” or something like that.
Some will sound suspiciously like genuine and long-established yearbooks – it only needs one or two words to be different. They will send you the entry for checking.
Up to this point, no money changes hands. But they hope you will be flattered enough to buy a copy of the book for $150 or more – it's “bound sumptuously” (whatever that means). If you send the money, you will get a poorly produced list, sometimes restricted to people whose surname starts with the same letter as yours, or perhaps nothing. It's all vanity.
But, like my “official honoree” status, it could cost me a lot for not very much. For even if I fell for this and spent a fortune on the various framed certificates and other self-marketing opportunities, it is really difficult to impress family, friends and colleagues with an award from an organisation they have never heard of.