This is nothing new. It's an old marketing ploy, and perfectly legal. As an old fart, I get stuff in the mail all the time where the stationary, typography and even the prose is cleverly designed to resemble official government correspondence such as IRS and Social Security documents, even checks! The originators are counting on a percentage of the recipients being so old and confused that they will open and read this scam, and maybe even sign up for the products and services they are peddling. Hey, their money is good, too, isn't it? If they're not paying attention they have no one to blame but themselves.

Young people, particularly children, are not immune to this predatory behavior either. Have you checked the advertising on Saturday morning kid shows? These people must employ child psychologists and undertake extensive consumer surveys and studies to determine just how to best steal money from children, and how to get parents to provide it.

It's frightening to consider the profound contempt these creeps must have for the rest of us. They must think that the marks stupid enough to fall for this crap deserve to be taken to the cleaners, and that those clever enough to produce this spam deserve to take them. It's how Madoff peddled his Ponzi, too.

Yeah, this sort of thing is so ubiquitous it's hardly worth commenting on.