Hey, losers, I won the lottery! A million Euros! It's changed my life! For one thing, I can't stop using exclamation marks! I'm so excited, I can't stand it. I want to buy a house, and I'll probably take a year's vacation. I was thinking I might even buy a hat. Or two hats. I can afford it. A million Euros! I'm rich! The most remarkable thing about this is that I didn't even have to buy a ticket. I just received an e-mail, telling me that South Australia Lotteries had selected my e-mail address from 60,000 selected e-mail addresses.

All I have to do, the e-mail said, is to send Deutsche Bank in Amsterdam my name, contact telephone and fax numbers and address, quoting my "winning number" and the amount I won. That's not much to ask, is it? I hate to burst my bubble, but such information is way too much to ask. If I were to respond to this "good news" by sending those details (to an address that almost certainly isn't actually Deutsche Bank), a dance would start that would end in my losing out, financially. That's because I haven't won the lottery. There is no lottery. It's an e-mail scam, one that falls under the rubric of "phishing", a technique that enables identity theft. Don't bother sending me a begging letter.

All such e-mail or postal offers that you will ever receive are phony. All of them. Most of the people who send them are after your money. Some just want to interrupt the flow of daily life. All play on your gullibility. Such people are vermin, but it takes two to tango. Like a cup needs a saucer, a crook needs a victim. As you go through life trying to become rich slowly, you will encounter an increasing number of crooks keen to separate you from your hard-earned savings. The more you have, the harder and faster these attempts will come. A lesson you would do well to learn from me, and not from life, is not to fall for offers as obviously spurious as winning a lottery you didn't enter.

Had I been dumb enough to reply to "Deutsche Bank", I would doubtless have been told that, if I would just send some money to "cover expenses" or "reinvest in future lotteries" or some such hot air, I would then receive my million Euros. On this page, it sounds obviously false, doesn't it? But this kind of crime works. E-fraud separated people from more than $60 billion last year.

I have learned the hard way. I received an e-mail once from a woman I'd never met, who worked at BIBA or the Employers' Council, I forget, saying that she loved me, and asking me to open an attached letter that outlined her feelings. I thought about it for a while. It seemed unlikely that a total stranger could feel that way, but then I would like to be loved, and perhaps she'd seen something I'd written and fallen for me. It could happen, I concluded, and opened the attachment.

The next day, I had a new computer delivered. My old one was destroyed. I was a victim of the "I Love You" computer virus. I fell for it because I'm human, and because I was at the time a loveless twerp. That scam wasn't even for gain. It was just to cause a spot of chaos and give some moron his 15 minutes of fame. I would have lost the $2,000 cost of my computer (and all my data) had I not, through sheer good fortune, been taking delivery of a brand new computer the next day anyway, having already paid for it (and accordingly backed up my data). This is what's known as dumb luck.

I did lose something else, though, and I was glad to be rid of it. I lost my belief that women who have never met me will fall in love with me, despite my stunning good looks.

Just in case you are unaware, here are some facts ? not opinion, facts ? that you will need to know if you hope to get rich slowly.

1. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

2. If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is too good to be true.

3. Only hard work and application lead to good fortune. Lying around watching TV won't get you anywhere in life. You snooze, you lose.

4. You don't deserve to be rich, even if you work hard all your life. You might be able to become rich if you apply yourself in all the right directions, but the truth is that you don't deserve anything. Not a fair shake. Not an even break. Nothing.

5. You are responsible for the great majority of the consequences of your own actions.

6. You've got to pay to play. That is how I knew immediately that I hadn't won the lottery. If all a person had to do to win the lottery was to have an e-mail address, where would the prize money come from? And if the winner were selected at random, why would anyone buy a lottery ticket? Look, I hate to be the one to break all this to you. I'm not saying you have to become a deeply cynical person. Everyone would rather you didn't, and if you already have become one, do us all a favour and snap out of it.

It's just that you're going to need a realistic approach to life to become rich and to stay rich. You have to not just read the facts above and nod sagely, you must internalise them, and then live accordingly.

I still believe in magic, and love, and goodness, and joy. But I stopped believing many years ago that I'd get anything for nothing in this world outside of all the luck I've already had, just being alive and healthy and knowing some very fine people ? and living in Bermuda. I've used up all the luck anyone might expect to have. In fact, I'm overdrawn at the Bank of Good Fortune. You probably are too, if you'd just admit it. Once I started to believe that, I was in a position to get something for something.

So. I've done my duty. I've probably chased off half my readers, but we don't need them. Knowing all this doesn't mean you should throw yourself off a bridge; throw yourself into a savings programme instead. You have the power to become wealthy, but you need to understand that the power comes from hard work, intelligent choices, avoiding catastrophe, and luck. As someone once said: "The harder I work, the luckier I get". Believe that. I do.

Oh, and for God's sake, stop whining.