Homeless is a strong word. I spent the first two weeks at the YHA before purchasing the car for $1100. I parked outside the hostel and used their facilities so I just slept in the car. I bought an amazing sleeping bag which made it possible in such low temperatures.

I also won an additional $1000 playing bingo at the local Legion club.

Balla!

Columbia House DVD club-> Ebay -> Profit

when i lived in boston and they still used tokens for the subway (the "T") i thought it would be a good idea to buy a ton of tokens before they increased the fare from $1 to $1.25 and then sell them back to passengers. but i didn't do anything about it.

Amusement park had a water park that rented lockers. They charged something like $8 for a locker and gave you back $5 when you returned the key. We used to go to the park early before there were long lines, then cash out later. But there were huge lines for keys at that time, so we just sold our key to someone in line for $6. We figured this had huge moneymaking potential. So we would find people who were clearing out their lockers and offer to buy their keys for $5 so they didn't have to wait in line, then go to the long lines and find people who wanted to buy keys and tell them we'd sell them for somewhere between $6 and $8, depending on how long the line was. We worked in a team, someone trying to buy the keys, bring them to the seller who worked the line, without being obvious enough to be caught. The buyer would also show people to the lockers to prove they actually worked and all.

Sometimes we ended up with surplus keys, so we'd just save them up and bring them back to sell another day. Except we figured out that if no one returned the keys, they'd just change the locks and you were screwed. So we ended up with a pile of keys, and had to try to figure out how to return 25 keys to get the refund.

Seems like a great spot to end the story.

Mabye there still trying to figure out how to do it.

We never got rid of the keys. I don't remember what happened to them, think my mom threw them away when she moved. We were too scared to get caught unloading them.

Another Martingale story.

I tried to get a consortium together at some place I worked who would all stump up £10. I would put money on the second favorites during my lunchtime with the aim that each series would end up with a £2 (something like that, can't remember exactly). Anyway since no one at my place knew anything about horses, betting or the martingale system it was proving a hard sell. Until that is one of our suppliers who everyone knew liked the nags and would put down some serious money on occasion overheard me trying to sell the idea. Even though he made it clear that it was doomed to failure to everyone he said 'yeah I'm in for the laugh' and that opened the floodgates so I had about 15 people in at the end. It was really funny how although I vaguely mentioned the likelihood of failure whilst playing up the never ending stream of income that might happen, the fact that here was someone who bet often was in even though he made it very clear to everyone that this was essentially setting fire to £10 was enough for them to suddenly lose their earlier reticence.

We had a bookies right next door to the office so every lunchtime for about 3 weeks I'd spend my lunchtime making weird bets like £4.72 on Bluebeard @ Redcar in the 1:45 until the inevitable happened. I did pay out once tho as I said for every £20 we make a dividend of 50p gets paid.

1. No fair regurgitating stories from the Scams thread! Besides, schemes that actually make money go there, schemes that failed go here, I would think. Also, pocket money schemes go there, Get Rich schemes go here.

2. Does anyone who makes gambling a big part of his life NOT hear about Martingale early on, and go broke trying it? I'm serious when I ask that. I was so convinced it was the path to riches when I heard about, and so convinced that I was smarter than all the right-thinking non-gamblers who tried to talk me out of it...I just can't believe that my naivety was all that unique.

3. My story:

I shared a bedroom with my brother growing up in a tiny house. We were both night owls, and the tv in the room stayed on pretty late after we were sent to bed. This was before having cable tv meant "having it in every room", and we only had a few channels and not much to watch late at night, and one night we got sucked into an infomercial titled "How To Make $1000 An Hour". The title had our attention. The huckster laid out the scheme:

When people take out a mortgage from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), they also take out "mortgage insurance", which will pay off the mortgage if something catastrophic happens to the borrower. The premiums for this insurance are factored into the monthly payments. Now, if the mortgage paid in full early (which happens whenever someone sells a house), the borrower is entitled to a pro-rated refund of these insurance monies, but they usually don't know that, and the FHA doesn't tell them, so the money sits there uncollected.

Now here's where you come in: you write to the FHA, and you request (under the Freedom of Information Act, no less) a list of all the people in your state that are owed refunds, and how much they are owed (after you've mopped up in your state, there's nothing to stop you from expanding your business to other states, but the FHA compiles these lists by state, and starting out in your home state makes sense). Once you get this list (which the FHA *will* send you, we were assured by the huckster), you write a letter to each person on the list that goes like this:

You don't tell them the FHA has their money, or else they'll call the FHA themselves, and they don't need you any more.

Once they contact you, you have them sign a Specific Power of Attorney, authorizing you to represent them in this matter (and this matter ONLY, as opposed to a normal Power of Attorney that would give you the right to represent them in all of their affairs), and another contract promising you your fee if, and only if, you get them their money.

Armed with that, you write the FHA, and request the money, and they send it to you. You then have one final meeting with your client, where you hand over their money, and they hand over your finder's fee. Everybody wins!

The infomercial guy tells us that if you send him $40, he'll send you a kit with everything you'll need:

--the letter you'll send to the FHA requesting the list
--the letter you'll send the clients
--the Specific Power of Attorney
--the contract you and the client will sign
--the letter you'll send the FHA requesting the refund

You can type (or write!) these letters out word-for-word and send them out!

He says the average fee you'll collect on these deals is $200, and you should be able to type/write five letters per hour, so you're looking at $1000/hr.

My brother and I are hooked, and quickly reach an agreement: he'll put up the $40 to order the kit; I'll do all the work (I know how to type, and my Commodore64 has a printer!), and we'll split what we make 50-50.

The kit arrived, and I went to work typing up all these letters to be printed. My father noticed this, and asked me what I was working on. I excitedly gave him the whole rundown.

DAD: (smirking) You PAID the infomercial guy for this?

ME: Not me, Jimmy. He put up the dough, I'm doing the legwork, and we'll split what we make.

DAD: (still smirking) Where's Jimmy now?

ME: Upstairs, in the bedroom.

DAD: (walks to bottom of stairs, shouts up) SUUUUUUUUCKERRRRRRRRRR! SUCKER!

JIMMY: (from in his room) Huh? What?

DAD: SSUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKERRRRRRR! SUCKER!

JIMMY: (emerging from room) Dad? Did you call me?

DAD: SUCKER! SUCKERR! SUCKER!!!

(it's funnier if you turn on my Dad's Good Will Hunting accent. "Suuuuckaaaa! Sucka!")

We never pulled in a dime, of course. Those FHA lists were merely fragments of information about the people owed the moniez, that's why the FHA never tracked down those folks themselves. They often just listed with the address of the property, with no name of the previous owner; and if you had a name, you didn't know their new address. I never got to send out a single "The Gov't Owes You $$$" letter.

I believed this idea was golden at the time

One young day whilst eating sushi with my gf at the time, I realised there was huge money making potential in rebranding and marketing a new sauce to go with sushi

My plan was to relabel and slightly retweak the recipe for soy sauce and create a new mega brand of sauce which would sweep all sushi munching nations by storm

The name of this mighty sauce would be Dan's SUPER SUSHI SAUCE

The fact that people had been eating this **** for centuries and that sushi condiment usage had already been optimised by using soy sauce, wasabi and ginger didnt really cross my mind

My asian gf laughed at me so I decided not to proceed with the idea

I'll happily sell your Dan's SUPER SUSHI SAUCE at my drive through sushi restaurant for truckers.

Reminded me of this one:

I used to work at the Race and Sports book at the Imperial Palace in the 90's. Unlike most books nowadays, the IP had separate (but adjacent) rooms for race betting and sports betting.

The long time Race Book manager was quitting to pursue other interests, and we had a send-off for him at a local bar. We'd plan these things for Sunday evenings, as that was the only night of the week we carried no night horse racing cards and closed down the race book around 6 PM. Most of the Race/Sports staff worked on the Race side, so Sundays would be the time most people could attend something like this.

We had a great time at the party, but conspicuous in his absence was the longtime Asst Manager, who was being promoted to replace the guy who was quitting. We all expected him to show up after he got out of work, but hours dragged by, and he never did, and the gossip started immediately. "Did these two guys not like each other or something? I never noticed anything..."

He finally showed, hours late, with the following astonishing explanation:

The last race Hollywood ran, and the ticket writers are counting down their drawers (the writers take and pay bets all day, they have no idea how much is supposed to be in their drawers at the end of the night; they count it, announce what they have, and the supervisor verifies that it's correct, or suggests they recount it), when suddenly one of the writers (a young guy, hired recently) shouts in a panicked voice, "I'm missing about $5000! I had a strap of $100's that's gone!"

This is insane. How can one of these drawers be $5k short? The writers would start their shift with exactly $5k, and at the end of the shift, would never have more than $6k-7k, they don't handle huge bets in the race book like they do in the sports book, and there's little-to-no variance in booking horse races. A race book writer would never HAVE a strap of $100's, unless someone was betting huge money with him all day, and that sort of action would never escape the notice of the supervisor.

There's nothing to do but call security, and after all the other writers deposited their balanced drawers into the drop-safe and left, the New Guy and the Asst Mgr were taken down to the Security office. The Asst Mgr described the scene: "They got right in his face. 'You scumbag, you know what happened to this money, you're not leaving this room till you come clean.' I was shocked. Then I was even more shocked when the kid instantly broke down and confessed!"

He was doing what you described, Martingaling big favorites at the race track. He'd write himself a $200 ticket on the big favorite, without putting up any of his own money. If it won, he ran the ticket through the machine, and pocketed the profit; if it lost, well, there'd be another race in a few minutes.

The best part of his scheme: it required zero BR, and parimutuel wagering has no max bet! Also, parimutuel wagering does not require a supervisor's approval for large bets, as there's no risk to the house (the money is sent to the track and co-mingled into the betting pool; the casino gets a % of the bet amount, win or lose). This could could write himself tickets as large as he wants, for as long as he wants, until a favorite finally wins a race.

The worst part of his scheme: He did it on a Sunday, the day we close early--he ran out of races!

reminds me of this old bookie joke:

YOUNG BOOKIE: How big a bankroll I need to book football?

OLD BOOKIE: Five dimes!

YOUNG BOOKIE: How big a bankroll I need to book baseball?

OLD BOOKIE: Ten dimes!

YOUNG BOOKIE: How big a bankroll I need to book horse racing?

OLD BOOKIE: A roll of dimes!

Ha! That's pretty good. Kinda seems like it could work too if you don't get greedy.

16yo -> 20$ - > egold casino. -> 3rd hand in video poker i get royal flush - > cashout -> HIYP investments - > 12dailypro.com investment + those things where you get 15 people to complete an offer and you get $/ipod/laptop -> withdraw 15k before it goes down (family member lost 8k) - > bank cancels withdrawal through stormpay.com -> i own stormpay and mastercard and get all my money back and my 20$ mastercard deposit.

Sad part is i still had some e-gold that i bought @ 750$ and now its worth like 2k? Cant find my account.

My fav degen/get rich quick story from a friend:

-Get a student loan for 2k
-Deposit said 2k onto full tilt
-Go on the heater of a lifetime, move up stakes every time possible.
-Turn the 2k into over 150k(!)
-Play against the best players in the world
-Lose every single cent in the account and default on student loan

haha! so much this. spot on analysis.

Was the hiyp thing the thing where you put money up through PayPal alternatives and get like 140‰ return if you login for say 12 days in a row and look at advertisements for other schemes? They all eventually crash because it's a ponzi type scheme. I did get free money for alert pay from one of them.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using 2+2 Forums

Can't even imagine what that poor kid was going through in that last race.

what match was it?

I can answer no to number 2. I got really into gaming when I was 14 and looked into the math of it all. By the time I became legally eligible to gamble at 18 I knew it wasn't a good idea and have never once employed the system.

nothing big time but when was in high school there was one vending machine could stick hand up and get first two rows. would clean that out every week, then sell to friends n kids cheaper. and if remember it was always the good stuff big cookies, tic tac's, beef jerky.

also could buy ice cream for 1.50$ for vanilla or 2$ for chocolate they'd hand you a 50/50 ticket. got my mom to buy same color tickets n just put letter C on back for chocolate ones like they did. sold those for 1$ remember making like 15$ a day at school wasnt bad when your 15. up until they caught me n suspended me for a week

I have no personal story to share, but this thread reminded me of an entertaining short documentary on youtube called "Bankrupt By Beanies" about a man trying to get rich with Beanie Babies.

yeah its those ponzi schemes where you only win if you are in the first. Same with Studio something but that one was a crappy 1% per day.

Made a lot with those things for a while. All you had to do was stay on the forums all day and signup to all the big ones that were re-starting.