How to Make $50,000 One Penny at a Time
I just stumbled across a very interesting article about how it is possible to make lots of money through what is known as 'micro-deposits'.
Most people who have PayPal, Google Checkout and other online funded accounts have encountered these 'micro-deposits' before. When you link one of these accounts to your bank account they ask you to verify that you are the account holder. One of the ways they do this is to make a few small deposits of a few pennies each into your bank account. You then look at your bank account and report the value of the deposits back the the service (PayPal, Google, etc) and they now are able to determine that you are, in fact, the owner of the attached bank account.
So Michael Largent, of Plumas Lake, California, in a nod to Mike Judge (who wrote Office Space and King of the Hill), setup accounts in names that included characters from King of the Hill and employed a technique where he repeated this 'verification funds transfer' over and over again, until he had over $50,000.
Judge's "Office Space" had a plot line where employees took fractions of pennies from each transaction processed in order to gain a much larger amount of money after many transactions had been processed in a similar way to what was carried out here.
It seems that Michael Largent thought he would be able to get away with his scam, however he did end up gettting arrested.
Check out this very interesing story over at Wired.
Comments
Mike Judge also wrote "Idiocracy", which is an underated movie worth watching.
Posted by: Barega | May 30, 2008 10:20 AM
No matter how clever you think you are, there's always someone smarter. When I read stuff like this, I have to wonder how much money he could have made if he devoted the time spent to more respectable money making plans.
Posted by: Top Rated | June 5, 2008 02:03 PM
Absolutely insane. Surely they could make the same amount of money in less time through proper channels.
Posted by: Lbug | June 5, 2008 05:41 PM
why would you get arrested for this? what is the fraud?
Posted by: pbx | June 12, 2008 12:07 AM
@PBX - If you read the article you will see that the guy was using fake names and setting up bank accounts under these false names which is FRAUD.
Posted by: Dallasite | June 12, 2008 03:25 PM
Smart person acting stupid - happens every day.
Posted by: Mo | June 22, 2008 04:02 PM