april fool's on friday, the thirteen?

i reckon my sis would have agreed. in a nutshell, someone called her and told her that she has won two hundred grand from the recent lucky draw!

breaking the shell: my sis told me about the mystery call and asked me to help verify the details. she said the call was from hong kong and the caller was a lady by the name of 'miss zhang'. miss zhang had told my sis she had won the second prize from a lucky draw and that she could check the details from the given website. miss zhang gave my sis a login details, saying my sis could check. although from the start, my sis was dubious about it, she went ahead to check. the login was successful but her name wasn't on the list. miss zhang explained that my sis wasn't at the scene of the lucky draw (she couldn't be because it was held in hong kong), so her name wasn't included in the list. miss zhang then gave my sis an address, telling her to meet a lawyer at the given address, to make a deposit of four thousand eight hundred dollars as an insurance before she could claim the prize money. miss zhang did not give the lawyer's name nor his/her contact. miss zhang also told my sis that the place was 'wesermiuom'.

although both of us were skeptical about the whole thing (anyone would be, for that matter), we decided to check based on the information we had on hand, just for the fun of it.

the address: 211 new bridge road #01-08. name: wesermiuom.

being sherlock holmes, i was determined to get to the bottom of this. first, i checked google for the given address. at first, it directed me to a jewellery shop name 'Your Jewellery and Goldsmith Pte Ltd'. i felt it didn't make any sense, therefore, i checked its roc profile. the search returned 'status in registrar: struck off'. weird. next, i checked yellowpages. no luck. then, i checked google again. this time, it return the correct company name.

the address: 211 new bridge road #01-08. name: western union. bingo!

pressing further, i called western union to clarify. i was immediately told that another person had called in to verify. same story. the only difference was that person only had to pay four thousand dollars.. i was told that management from western union had already been looking into the matter. great, this would confirm the hoax!

you are a smart ass, miss zhang. and, a dumb ass too. if you think you could get money this way, try harder.

ok folks, never pick up any call starting with these numbers: 008 526527*******.

needless to say, look at their cars (copied from brands like bmw and lexus), look at how they used chemically processed cardboard boxes as filling for buns and many many other scandals. sad to say, but the chinese are really a disgrace...