Congratulations Ill Advised Investor!

You have a staggeringly large amount of money. Almost all of it comes from your inheritance, which your parents allocated to you long before they realized you weren’t really worth talking to. The only reason you still have it is because it would prove legally difficult to separate you from your funds without your consent, so they’ve mostly left the issue alone. But today they’ve finally hatched a scheme that should allow them to get the money you didn’t earn back from you.

It’ll start with a letter in your mailbox from a group called Allied Technical Services Group Unlimited Future Components. The letter will invite you to invest in their company, which “does something with computers” (the letter’s words!) and promises “a return of some sort on your investment, allowing for corrective market forces.”

You’ll be ecstatic! Your parents will always have criticized you for making bad decisions, especially bad decisions with money, and the letter will read like a hit list of good choices you can make with your dollars and sense. You’ll immediately write a check for ATSGUFC with “all” written in the amount field. Your butler will correct you, informing you that that isn’t a valid amount and, with his help, you’ll correctly make out a check for the vast majority of your bank balance to an organization with an investment letter that reads like a Nigerian scam.

Then, again with your butler’s help, you’ll mail the check to an address which is oddly similar to your parents address.

Three days later you’ll be broke and your parents will have all the money they wish they hadn’t given you back in their bank accounts. They’ll leave you with a shopping cart, an assortment of cans and an army wool blanket, though. And your butler will give you a carefully constructed series of notes about how to live in the real world which you won’t be able to read, because you’re illiterate. But at least you’ll have made a decision on your own for once in your ridiculous, cloistered life.

Congratulations Ill Advised Investor!