I received a letter in the mail the other day with a banner at the top that read “Important Retirement Plan Information.” When I opened it, I found a pretty lame excuse for a US Mail phishing scam. The cover letter included my name and address, and vaguely inferred that I have some unclaimed 401-k money sitting somewhere, but that they need some additional info from me to cut the the check, since the last one was returned (even though they some how managed to correctly address this correspondence). The following page asks for my SSN. Hahahaha. What!?? The return envelope goes to a PO box in TX. No where on this correspondence is there a phone number, a physical address, or anything else, besides the most generic fake company name ever: “FRANKLIN.” It is kind of sad for me to imagine some innocent unassuming little granny falling for this thing. I hope that scenario is limited to my imagination.

I received this in the mail the other day. Just a few observations: What ever happened to target audience, when advertising? Wouldn’t they want to send these to people who haven’t actually already earned a college degree? Also, judging by the pictures on the ad, I’m not sure if I would exactly fit-in with the rest of the student body. Finally, could they have been any less discreet about shamelessly ripping off the “yes, you can” part? They should have just written “Obama went to college, so should you.”