There are a whole host of ways to make money, but it is fair to say that some of them are perhaps not as legal as others. Take the case of a guy called Michael Largent who was certainly rather clever in his approach, although he was also rather stupid at the same time.

Back in 2008, Largent had the idea of trying to take advantage of the fact that various online accounts send you a few cents to verify that you are the owner of an account. So, he went to the extent of creating over 58,000 fake accounts using names from the world of cartoons, as well as, randomly putting together names as well as fake social security numbers and addresses.

It does sound like a lot of work, but it led to him being able to obtain in the region of $50,000 before his bank wondered what on earth was going on that he was being sent all of these small sums of money from the likes of Google, amongst others.

The surprising part is that he then told his bank what he was doing as he thought that he was safe from a legal perspective. He was actually correct, but because he had used fake names and fake numbers, it meant that he was indeed guilty of fraud and was therefore charged along those lines.

So close at pulling off an absolute masterplan, but yet he was still actually a failure.