Chain Mails and the global financial crisis

The other day I spotted a chain mail in my inbox....
Of course I have received several before...
What was different about this one is that it had an rather unusual pitch!
It claimed that a Top Global Software Company (TGSC) in collaboration with a renowned internet services provider was pulling out all stops to promote its product and running an email beta test....
All that one had to do it was claimed, was to forward this chain mail to as many friends as possible and then sit back and rake in the moolah!
For, it was claimed that the TGSC would pay upwards of Rs.10,000 for every person that one forwarded this email to and a further decreasing sum each time one's mail was forwarded in the chain...
Further there were testimonials attached from several persons who claimed to have actually received tens of thousands of dollars in this process....
I scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the email to find to my amazement that at least this particular chain mail had started more than three years before!!!
Now if the claims were indeed true....
Then it meant that countless millions of people have been quietly raking in untold fortunes over these past three years....
I wonder why then....... there's a global liquidity crisis and why many of the top banks and financial institutions of the world have gone bust!!!