I HAVE just discovered that my Yahoo email account has stopped me becoming a billionaire.
Email accounts have a safety device – I suspect it's a little man in Slough who checks everything you do on the world wide web – that diverts suspicious and unsolicited emails into a section called Spam so you are not bothered with them.
I have just checked the contents of my Spam section and, lo and behold, in the last two weeks I have received 235 messages from bank officials in Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa, that appears to have been suffering from an unending spate of aircraft disasters.
The officials tell me that these plane crashes have resulted in the deaths of depositors at their banks, thus leaving vast amounts of spare cash they now want to move surreptitiously to a British account. Mine appears to be the account of choice and, if I agree, I get to keep 40 per cent.
I've just worked it out that all these offers add up to a personal fortune for me of one billion, 380 million dollars. And that's not taking into account the four or five times I appear to have won $1.5 million in an email lottery, also from Burkina Farso.
These are, of course, all attempted cons. I must send that little man in Slough a thank-you card.
