When I was young, I used to watch a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons. I enjoyed sitting by the television on Saturday mornings gorging on Cap’n Crunch and indulging in the antics of that waskaly wabbit and his friends.

One of the shorts that always stood out to me was the one where Bugs cons an unsuspecting old man into buying The Brooklyn Bridge. He does this by telling the man a fictional story of how a New York City bridge-jumper named Steve Brody allegedly leaped off of it. The short ends with the old man believing Bugs’ story and giving him money.

Of course in real-life, even a kid in a Cap’n Crunch coma knows you can’t actually buy The Brooklyn Bridge.

Oddly, I was reminded of this cartoon this Saturday morning as I was perusing my Facebook timeline and saw no less than seven copies of this same picture from people on their own pages:

The picture (and attached link) goes on to say how two of this week’s Powerball winners were giving away some of their newfound fortune to random people. All you have to do to get in on your chance at a free ten grand was to click on the link provided and share the post with your friends.

Of course, what the link fails to mention is that it is part of a phishing scam. Designed to trick unsuspecting people into giving up personal information (like Facebook and bank passwords and social security numbers) in exchange for…. well, absolutely nothing at all.

You might remember a similar occurrence of this FREE money scam shortly after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg publicly stated on major news outlets that he was giving away much of his fortune to charity. And it wasn’t long before scam artists took to social media and posted a link of Zuckerburg along with a note saying that poor, random souls (like us) could also get in on the action simply by clicking on a link. At that time, I saw no less than a dozen of these posts/links on my timeline from people who apparently had fallen for the scam.

It’s one thing when horrible people prey on the elderly by dressing up like a representative from the gas company and trick them into letting them into their homes only to steal their money and jewelry. Or when representatives from “Microsoft” call non-tech savvy people at home and tell them their computer is corrupt and can only be fixed by providing valid credit card information.

But the fact that so many people quickly fall for these “Get Rich Quick” schemes on social media really scares me.

Think about it: Why would complete and total strangers who’ve just won part of a $1.5 billion dollar jackpot want to give away $1,000,000 to people they’ve never met – even before they’ve collected it? And worse, why would these same people set-up a questionable website and then have it promoted on Facebook? Don’t you think that if this were really true, MAJOR news outlets all over the world would be running the story?

What’s that old saying? — “If it sounds too good to be true….”

But if all that doesn’t raise a red flag then consider this: Saying you don’t need all of the money and then only offering to give away $1,000,000 is pretty cheap. Especially when you consider you’ve just pocketed $300 million in winnings.

So the next time you see any of these posts offering free money from the rich and famous, delete them. Because there’s only one real way to get legitimate money my friends, and that’s by doing it the old-fashioned way.

Earning it.