From the "old game, new twist" department:

There now seems to be Pyramid/Ponzi schemes popping up on the Internet where you supposedly can get a free iPod or a free flat-screen TV if you sign enough people up. Watch out, folks...this is indeed a Pyramid/Ponzi scheme and wildly illegal. While at this point it seems people are getting their iPods, common sense suggests that eventually the pyramid will be struck, leaving a bunch of unhappy people at the bottom.

What is distressing is that in this current scam, lots of otherwise legit sites like AOL and Ancestry.Com are in on it, and they've managed to get some really positive ink in places like Wired Online.

And of course, you know if you buy into this, you will get tons of spam, and you won't have even a shred of recourse against it because you will have an "existing business relationship" with the spammers, so they can blast away at you scot-free.

Give it a few months...the whole damn thing will collapse, and a lot of people will feel pretty silly having sig files with "get a free iPod" in them.