$$$"TRUE STORY" SEEN ON ABC's 20-20

"BOY 15 MAKES 71 THOUSAND IN 5 WKS!!!"

Parents of 15-year-old find $71,000 cash hidden in his closet.

Does this headline look familiar? Of course it does. You most likely
have just seen this story recently featured on a major nightly news
program (USA).

His mother was cleaning and putting laundry away when she came
across a large brown paper bag that was suspiciously buried
beneath some clothes and a skateboard in the back of her 15-year-old
sons closet. Nothing could have prepared her for the shock she got
when she opened the bag and found it was full of cash. Five-dollar
bills, twenties, fifties and hundreds - all neatly rubber-banded in
labeled piles.

"My first thought was that he had robbed a bank", says the
41-year-old woman, "There was over $71,000 dollars in that bag --
that's more than my husband earns in a year".

The woman immediately called her husband at the car-dealership
where he worked to tell him what she had discovered. He came
home right away and they drove together to the boys school and
picked him up. Little did they suspect that where the money came
from was more shocking than actually finding it in the closet.

As it turns out, the boy had been sending out, via E-mail, a type of
"Report" to E-mail addresses that he obtained off of the Internet.
Everyday after school for the past 2 months, he had been doing
this right on his computer in his bedroom.

"I just got the E-mail one day and I figured what the heck, I put my
name on it like the instructions said and I started sending it out",
says the clever 15-year-old.

The E-mail letter listed 5 addresses and contained instructions to
send one $5 dollar bill to each person on the list, then delete the
address at the top and move the others addresses down , and
finally to add your name to the top of the list.

The letter goes on to state that you would receive several
thousand dollars in five-dollar bills within 2 weeks if you sent
out the letter with your name at the top of the 5-address list.
"I get junk E-mail all the time, and really did not think it was going
to work", the boy continues.

Within the first few days of sending out the E-mail, the Post Office
Box that his parents had gotten him for his video-game magazine
subscriptions began to fill up with not magazines, but envelopes
containing $5 bills. "About a week later I rode [my bike] down to
the post office and my box had 1 magazine and about 300 envelops
stuffed in it. There was also a yellow slip that said I had to go up
to the [post office] counter. I thought I was in trouble or
something (laughs)". He goes on, "I went up to the counter and
they had a whole box of more mail for me. I had to ride back home
and empty out my backpack because I could not carry it all".

Over the next few weeks, the boy continued sending out the E-mail."
The money just kept coming in and I just kept sorting it and stashing
it in the closet, barely had time for my homework". He had also been
riding his bike to several of the banks in his area and exchanging
the $5 bills for twenties, fifties and hundreds. "I didn't want the
banks to get suspicious so I kept riding to different banks with
like five thousand at a time in my backpack. I would usually tell the
lady at the bank counter that my dad had sent me in [to exchange
the money] and he was outside waiting for me. One time the lady
gave me a really strange look and told me that she would not be
able to do it for me and my dad would have to come in and do it,
but I just rode to the next bank down the street (laughs)."

In fact, the boy did not have any reason to be afraid. It was
completely legal according to US Postal and Lottery Laws, Title 18,
Section 1302 and 1341, or Title 18, Section 3005 in the US code, also
in the code of federal regulations, Volume 16, Sections 255 and 436,
which state a product or service must be exchanged for money received.

Here is the letter that the 15-year-old was sending out by E-mail,
you can do the exact same thing he was doing, simply by
following the instructions in this letter.