The Thamesmead Grump

DO THE MATHS

What would I do without Facebook, it provides me with half the stories I publish here and it hasn't failed me again.

This time it's an invitation to join a pyramid scheme, this one being the "36 books for 1" scam. To quote the thatsnonsense.com post, 

"Basically, if you were recruited by someone, you’d buy a book and send it to the person who recruited the person who recruited you. Then you’d recruit 6 people who’d each send a book to the person who recruited you. Then those 6 people would recruit 6 people each and they would all send books to you! Voila, 36 books! The scheme would continue with each person sending 1 book and recruiting 6 others into the scheme."

The thatsnonsense.com example uses the word "mums" rather than "moms" which appears on my facebook page so there must be an American version of the scam going at the same time.

Anyway, now for the tiresome arithmetic. 

Pay attention, there will be a test at the end -

To get your 36 book, you have to recruit 6 members who would in turn have to recruit 6 more. It's this 36 people who each send you a book. Those 36 people now need 1296 members in the scheme before they get their 36 books and for that 1296 to get their books they now need 277,200.

This 277,200 need 10 million members who would then need 360 million. They of course will never get their books because you would need nearly 13 billion members in the scheme and that is more than the entire population of the Earth.

Now the test:-

Complete the well known phrase or saying 

"If it looks too good to be true  -- -------- --."