Leaving the gambler's dream

 

BY ALL accounts, I should be a multi-millionaire by now. If only I had replied to those urgent e-mails in my mailbox this week.

Like the STG1 million (RM5.30 million) I won from the Nokia Mobile Lottery, plus another STG500,000 (RM2.65 million) from the UK Online Lotto Promotion.

Or a share of the US$7 million (RM24.71 million) belonging to Saddam Hussein that US Sgt Martin Hems found in Iraq and needs my help to hold for safekeeping until he completes his tour of duty.

I also have bankers from UBS Investment Bank in London to the central bank of Burkina Faso who believe I'm trustworthy enough to share US$50 million (RM176.5 million) with, provided I claim to be next of kin to deceased businessmen who have no will and no living relatives.

I've always thought if something is too good to be true, then it must be bogus - that's my motto.

But the tricksters who send out such e-mails, and those who fall for them, follow a different rule called "the law of averages".

They believe that outcomes will "even out" in the end.

"If I send my e-mails to enough people, eventually someone will believe me," Sgt Hems (if that is even his real name) is probably thinking.

His unsuspecting victims, meanwhile, are convinced that after getting fooled numerous times, the next offer to come along just might be the real thing.

For the most part, this is more a case of wishful thinking than based on any accepted mathematical principle. It has also been called "the gambler's fallacy".

Journalists are generally cynical and sceptical, but even the best of us can be taken for a ride, and not just by lottery winning e-mails.

Recently, I looked up a British company that has had two signing ceremonies for multi-million dollar projects in Malaysia, so far. No company documentation was given to reporters covering the event.

There was not much on the company or its key officials on the Internet either. Its registered address (obtained from a website database of UK companies), when searched on Google Maps, turned out to be a double-storey house in the middle of a residential area.

The natural tendency today is to be sceptical whenever there are too many zeroes in the numbers. For a legitimate proposition to win us over it has to be backed by as much information and transparency as possible.

It is also true that not everything that appears secretive at first turns out bad. Even Ananda Krishnan and Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary were once "little-known". Look at them now.

But where there are lingering questions, we should fully exhaust all avenues to find the answers. And we'll keep on looking. You can bet on that.