It the same old story. You open your inbox to find an e-mail declaring that you have won another million dollars. Yawn. You know what comes next. All you have to do is send a certified check to handle the administrative costs. Or send your credit card or bank account number to “identify” you.

As you delete this nuisance spam, you wonder, “Why do they bother to send this junk? Who would fall for these transparent attempts to swindle them?”

Well, your question is answered. Meet G.H., the man who personally is responsible for encouraging scam artists world wide. G.H. is so good at falling for fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes that he has decided to share his story with the world and so the Pittsburgh Tribune Review writes about how gullible this man is. (Fortunately, they don’t give his real name, realizing that as gullible he is, this article would just be inviting more people to swindle him even more.)

G.H. likes to play foreign lotteries through the mail. Never mind that this is illegal (and usually fraudulent). He just likes to play them. What motivates him is how often he wins these foreign lotteries. It is almost unbelievable how often he wins these foreign lotteries. It is enough to make you suspicious. But of course, it isn’t enough to make G.H. suspicious.

G.H. first “won” $815,950 in a Spanish lottery. All he had to do to claim his winnings was to wire $750 to someone he didn’t know. Where alarms would be going off for normal people as they smelled a scam, G.H. gladly wired off his $750 while dreaming of how he would spend the winnings.

Of course, there were no winnings.

As Scottie tells us, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Amazingly, G.H. continued to play foreign lotteries, and guess what? This man is really good at this, because (you’ll never believe this) he “won” again. This time he “won” over $500,000 in an Australian lottery. But our boy G.H. is wising up. He doesn’t fall for the, “Send me money to process your claim” scam. No way. He’s far to smart for that. This time, he didn’t have to risk any of his money. They sent him a check for $4,800. All he had to do was to deposit the check, wait until the check cleared (proving that it is all on the up and up), and then wire $4,400 of that money, to cover the processing fees.

Does this sound suspicious to anyone out there? Guess what. Shame on G.H., because he did it. When the check cleared, he knew that this time everything was legitimate, and he really was going to get the half a million.

Well, the check was counterfeit and the payment was reversed, leaving G.H.’s account overdrawn and G.H. responsible to cover the debt. He’d wired the money out of country and it is almost impossible to get it back, so G.H. is stuck.

But the good news is that soon G.H. will be a millionaire, because a few months ago he joined the Millionaire Web Club. He has given them $30,000 to set up a web site for him that the Millionaire Web Club claims will earn him $25,000 a month, although all he has gotten from them so far is a check for $450. But that is a good start on his $30,000 investment, don’t you think? Maybe next month it will pick up to $25,000 a month, and he can quickly forget the losses on the foreign lotteries.

But not to worry. If his web site doesn’t pick up soon, G.H. is sure to “win” another foreign lottery shortly.

So, if you ever wonder why these scammers bother to send out their ridiculous e-mails promising how you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams if you just send them money, you now know that G.H. (and the few people like him) are the reason.