Consider me freaked out.
I came home today and emptied my mailbox. Lo and behold, there was an interesting item within: a large orange envelope, hand-addressed, posted from within Australia. It had been diverted via some Sydney Post Office because the sender had forgotten to include my apartment number, but it had finally reached me.
Opening the letter curiously, I found two printed sheets of paper. At the top of the first was printed:
My name is Dave Rhodes, and in September 1997 I lost my job.
Not only is this the first time I've seen Dave Rhodes in the wild since the late 90's, it's the first time I've ever seen him in print, rather than cross-posted to ten thousand different newsgroups.
The letter had been carefully Australian-ised. Rhodes seems to have moved to Perth, and the obligatory testimonials were from Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane. And apparently, so long as you write a handwritten note containing your name, address and the words "please accept this $10.00 gift", it's all legal and above board!
The potential gain had gone up, too: the 1988-vintage Rhodes claimed to have made $50,000 each go up the pyramid for a total of $400,000, while the modern-era Dave made $70,000 a pop for a total of $1.1 million.
I checked the name at the bottom of the list: one Carolyn Jardine from Maryborough, Victoria. The postmark on the letter was also from Maryborough, so I figured I should probably ring and let her know that she was facing a possible $12,000 fine if someone less lazy than I decided to report this.
She didn't seem particularly surprised.
Update:
Because I seem to be getting lots of random hits on this, and some people don't seem to be able to understand sarcasm, I'll just add:
The Dave Rhodes scam, and all variants of it, are against the law.
If you don't believe me, ask The West Australian Government.
There is no magic wink and nod you can apply to a pyramid scam to make it legal. Whatever you do, whether it's saying you're trading addresses, or including a note saying the money is a gift, or writing the letter in red ink while singing Advance Australia Fair, it's still a pyramid scam, and it's illegal, and if someone decides to prosecute, you'll end up paying a really big fine.
