do this or get dead: modern-day chain letter or mindi and russ get sucked into a ponzi scheme

my email inbox has a special place in it's heart for spam. lots of it. so i've learned to navigate around the junk emails and hit "delete" in a fast and efficient manner.

what i haven't done is learned how to stop my 11 year old from sending us every modern-day form of the chain letter known to man. chandler is a firm believer that, by accosting friends and loved ones via email, she will find out the name of her true love, make a million dollars in 14 days, keep a little girl in peru from dying, and eliminate cellulite from trouble areas.
but her latest email was just a little more over the top than usual. it read:

On December 24, 2006 at 8 oclock in the morning, a young 14 year old boy by the name of Scott Jackson was found dead. Doctors couldnt come up with the cause of his death. His mother checked his emails to see if she could figure out what happened. Turns out he was still signed into his Yahoo email account. She found he had gone to sleep after he read and didnt send a chain letter about a little girl that kills you in your sleep with no natural cause of death. This is the email she read: My name is Ofelia Heras. Im 16 years old. Im a murderer. I have no face. When you look at me youll die immediately.You have 900 seconds to send this to 24 friends or I will visit you tonight. Do this or get dead.

first of all, i was like, "EWWWWHHH. creepy." then i had to spend a moment wondering what kind of trainwreck english class this person had enrolled in, and THEN i remembered that they were in 7th grade. perhaps even a really advanced 5th grader? and lastly, i spent a good 30 seconds laughing at my 2nd born, thinking about what a gullible little fish she is.

that is, until i remembered THE MOTHER OF ALL CHAIN LETTERS that russ and i fell for-- hard. like flat on our faces.

we were newly married and multi-level marketing was all the big rage. the way to make the big $$$ was to have people working for you in your DOWNLINE!! working for you even when you are not!! letting the POWER OF THE PYRAMID work for you!!

we received a letter that talked about a great opportunity. mail 1 dollar to 100 different people that were on this list. in return, you had the potential to get upwards of $100, 000!!

we knew it was too good to be true. we knew most people wouldn't do it. but the way we figured it, if only 5 percent of the people actually did it, we could make 1000 dollars. being the optimists that we were, we mailed out 100 envelopes to 100 people with 1 dollar in each.

6 months later, we had received 3 dollars.

PONZI SCHEME: 1

RUSS AND MINDI: 0