The other day, I was feeling miserable. I felt like life had been just a little bit too harsh as of late, so I decided I deserved something good for a change. I bought a lottery ticket. I was convinced I was going to win, because it would feel right and fair enough. I didn’t really think that, but it was a comforting thought. Then I realised the results wouldn’t come out for three days, and I was disappointed, but still, what’s three days of being a poor aimless loser compared to the rest of your life? Not much.
I haven’t had a great time in these three days, but it’s been nice to know it’s only temporary, as soon I will be a millionaire. The results will appear on the internet in a few minutes, but I’m in no rush; I will wake up late tomorrow, do some yoga, maybe have breakfast in a coffee shop nearby, and slowly make my way to the lottery place to pick up my fortune. I wonder how much tax there is on it; I bet it’s quite a lot. Nobody likes taxes, but I’m pretty sure I will absolutely despise them very soon.
I have no delusions about what this money will bring. I know it won’t solve all my problems. I’m awfully unfit at the moment, and I find the idea of plastic surgery revolting, so that will take some work regardless of how rich I am. The problem of “what to do with my life” will linger on, but finding those things to do will be much easier now that I will be rich. I think I might spend a year just trying different stuff, having varied experiences and checking out different places. Seeing what exactly is up with the world will be my self-appointed job. Hopefully I will feel strongly enough about some of those things to dedicate myself to them in the longer term.
I have to admit I am a bit worried about how it will affect my personal development. Before I was going to be rich, I only had an uncertain few years of juggling gigs and badly paid jobs, with no future or expectation of improvement to look forward to, but now that I will be rich very soon, I’m not sure how I will be able to keep myself challenged, humble and productive. I would quite like to learn some skills related to the arts, like music or painting, so I might move somewhere with a strong art scene, get a big nice place in a good location, and spend my time improving my craft and hanging out with cool people. Eventually, I would like to create some sort of institution; a big building that is a production company, a museum, an art gallery, a school and some sort of shop. I would like to find exciting artists from all around the world and help them create cool stuff.
Before any of that, however, I will buy a house for my mum. Perhaps two; one in the city, near her shop and everything she knows and loves; and one in the countryside, somewhere near the sea. We will have fun finding the perfect place for her and decorating it together. Of course, I will do the same for my dad. My stepmom is an architect, so she might want to build her own house, that should be interesting!
I have never been very impressed with the most exaggerated of luxurious extravagancies. Stuff like sportscars, yachts and private jets have always seemed like ordinary things covered in tacky, ugly, irresponsible coats of paint. I doubt I will be indulging in any of that stuff. I don’t want to isolate myself from the world and only be in contact with other rich people; they always seem extremely close-minded and boring. I still want to live in the real world and learn about people and the things going on in their lives.
Still, I don’t see the lingering sense of dread going away any time soon. Sure, money will remove the stress and worry around my basic survival, but what about feeling like my actions are meaningful? If survival is ensured, how foolish does one have to become to kid themselves into ignoring the arbitrary and sad nature of their self imposed goals?
I think the key has something to do with space. Being somewhere where everything you want is within walking distance seems like a huge part of a good quality of life experience. Good food, wheather, and company too. It’s a hard balance to find but because I will be able to travel a lot so I’m confident I will find a place close to perfect eventually. If not, I can always build it myself.
I wonder if I will have to hide the fact that I’m rich from people in order to have a normal life. If I did that, it would be easier to integrate, but then it would be sad to see them struggle and not be able to help. Maybe I will pop in as a secret angel investor; all my friends will think they are the luckiest bunch of people on earth!
Anyway, it’s getting late and I’ll have lots of things to figure out starting tomorrow, but I’m sure it will be fun!
On one of the last days of 2017, as I was preparing to fly to Madrid to celebrate the new year with part of my family, I got to Terminal 1 of Barcelona Airport with half an hour to spare. I was standing in front of the long lines of people trying to get through the security check, hesitating to join them, when a man approached me from behind.
He acted surprised and glad that I spoke English and complimented my accent. He said he was with his wife, that they had lost a plane to Manchester; he wanted to buy a ticket for the next flight (the last of the night) but he was 16 euros short. If I was so kind as to lend it to him, he would send it back to me the moment they landed. He pointed at the long, crowded line of Check-In desks and said his wife was in there trying to deal with the airline, to no avail. He wasn’t carrying a bag. He was wearing warm, mismatched clothes and he looked scruffy as fuck. He had small red sores scattered around his face. I said “sorry man, I don’t have any money on me”. He immediately directed me to an ATM machine nearby.
As he escorted me to it, he repeated the exact same sentence about Manchester he had said a minute before. He asked about my family and I said something vague in response. He was trying to make conversation like a nurse taking blood from a child at the hospital; trying to stop one from thinking about what exactly is going on. I was pretty sure I was being scammed at this point, but I decided to give him the money anyway. There was the small chance his sob story was true, and even if it wasn’t, he had put so much effort into it, and he looked so disheveled, I figured it was an act of charity either way. I guess the fact that it was one of those days between Christmas and the new year (and that it was a small amount of money) influenced my decision.
He seemed more giddy than thankful as he took the money. He gave me an email address (andrewgradon at yahoo dot co dot uk) and swiftly walked away. I looked at my watch. I still had about twenty minutes to spare, so I followed him. He walked right past the check-in desks he had pointed at earlier and into a crowd of people. He was walking fast but I managed to keep him in sight. He walked along the airport’s front glass wall. He turned left, disappearing behind the elevators that went to the shopping centre downstairs. I assumed he was going to walk out of the last rotating glass door at the end of the airport, so I walked out as well. Now outside, I was almost running, hoping to catch him by surprise, thinking about what I was going to yell at him. I decided on -a friendly, but stern- “Nice one mate! Come on, give us the money!”. Sadly, I didn’t get to use it.
As I approached the last door, I realised he wasn’t coming out. For a moment, I hesitated, thinking his story might have been true, and his wife was just resting in one of the rows of seats in this area of the airport. If that were the case, and they saw me, my suspicions would be obvious to them, and I would be embarrassed. I walked in again, discreetly, trying to merge into another crowd of people and looking around. I quickly realised he wasn’t there anymore. He couldn’t have gone back to where we were before in such a short time, and he didn’t take the elevators… then I saw them; the emergency stairs, hidden between the bathrooms and company-specific information booths. As I started to make my way down about three flights of stairs, I could hear the door close at the bottom. I ran down as quickly as I could and opened it again. There were hundreds of people walking back and forth, coffee shops, restaurants, souvenirs… he was nowhere to be seen, and I had a plane to catch, so I made my way back up, still looking for him in the distance as I stood in the slow moving walkway.
I wasn’t very hopeful I was going to get my money back, but after a couple days I saw his email noted down in my phone and I decided to give it a go. I immediately got a response: “Delivery Status Notification (Failure); The email account that you tried to reach does not exist”. Of course, that was probably not his real name, but out of curiosity I searched for it online. In front of me appeared a slew of news articles which claimed he had been caught. As it turns out, he is a well known con man specialised in exactly this scheme.
Apparently, he used to show up at airports across Europe dressed in a suit and tie, distressed, asking for around 40 pounds to go home and see his kids. His victims were usually businessmen or women who appeared wealthy. He said he would send the money back as soon as he got home, and subsequently vanished forever. He could do this dozens of times a day, allegedly earning over 15,000 pounds a month. Because he operated between different countries with international travellers as his victims, the individual thefts were rarely reported, and he was hard to investigate and prosecute. To get the victim’s trust, he showed them his passport, which proved to be a mistake when a Swedish businessman took a picture of it and posted it online, raising his public profile. In January 2015, after someone reported being scammed by him at Munich airport, he showed up there two days later and was picked up by the police. He was sentenced to serve 10 months in prison, after which he claimed he would go back to England to work on his brother’s farm.
I wrote that last paragraph in past tense, but there’s no reason to think he has stopped doing this. Even though the man I met looked quite different from the passport picture circulated in 2009, I barely got a glance at him. This businessman persona sounds like it requires a lot of work, and fishing for relatively large amounts of money from individual victims might have been counterproductive, since they are more likely to report the theft, while people like me are more likely to just let it go. I gave him 20 euros, but he was asking for merely 16. If he’s doing this regularly he’s still getting a healthy paycheck while the vast majority of the swindles go unreported. The guy I gave money to looked like he was having a hard time regardless of whether his story was true. This could either be an improvement on the formula or a sign that running the same manipulative little trick for almost 20 years wears one down.
As a person who likes mind games of all kinds and cons in particular, I have to admire this scam because of how clean, simple and effective it is. It also has a few redemptive qualities. The victims give away their money out of generosity. It’s based on false pretences, but there is no expectation that the victims will earn more money than they currently have or that they will get a reward in return; they happily part with it as an act of kindness to a complete stranger. In any case, it’s a loss they can afford, because if they couldn’t it would be highly unlikely that they would give anything away.
It is possible that some people feel betrayed and humiliated by the scheme and resolve to never give money to those in need again. I think it’s more likely, and it’s certainly my case, that they feel good about themselves in the moment and that afterwards, even though they are sad about giving money to a scammer, they feel proud of themselves for unquestioningly helping someone in need instead of being skeptical of them. The greatness of this deception is that people’s goodness and generosity towards fellow human beings is a necessary precondition for it’s success. The fact that it has been successful for many years in cities across Europe gives me nothing but hope.
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