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© Copyright 2001, Jim Loy
Let's pretend that you bet on pro football. And I send you email telling you which teams will win which games in the playoffs. And I tell you that if you give me $100, I will tell you who will win the Super Bowl, and the final score. And, after the playoffs are over (and before the Super Bowl) you find that I was right, on every single game. I picked every single winner. Would you send me $100?
Here is what I did. I got the schedule for the playoffs, and I predicted Buffalo would beat Tennessee, Seattle would beat Miami, Jacksonville would beat Miami, etc. Of those three games, I only got one right. You see, I haven't a clue (much) of who will beat who. But I sent that prediction to maybe 100 gamblers, and they think I'm a fool. But I sent out other predictions, of every possible permutation of wins and losses. Most of my predictions were way off. But to 100 gamblers, I sent predictions that came out right on the money. And most of those 100 gamblers sent me $100 each, because they were impressed. And I made several thousand dollars. It was a scam. My Super Bowl prediction was a wild guess. But I wasn't betting on the Super Bowl.
This scam is actually done. The scammer may claim to have psychic powers, or claim to have inside information, or claim to have studied the stats with a Cray computer. The scam may involve sports betting, or the stock market.