"Congratulations! Your name was attaached to a ticket that was recently drawn from a pool of 50,000 names for the lump sum of $250,000!"
Sound familiar? Many consumers have reported receiving phone calls and letters from Judith Thompson, Fat Payment & Securities Inc., Sweepstakes Resources and Payment Verification Center, Canada, congratulating them on winning the lottery.
According to the Better Business Bureau, those are the names that scammers are using this week. The names change from day to day, but the scam remains the same.
After the phone call, the consumer receives a visit from a messenger service delivering a cashier's check in the amount of $3,850.
Next, "winners" are instructed to deposit the $3,850 cashier's check into their bank accounts and call the messenger service back.
Usually, according to the BBB, a few days later the "winner's" bank will call to inform that the cashier's check that was deposited has come back as a counterfeit or fraudulent cashier's check, and the account is overdrawn.
Tenn-Tucky BBB Branch Manager Lori Austin said she thinks this scam is concentrated in the Clarksville area because two consumers have contacted the BBB with similar stories.
If you receive a lottery, sweepstakes or prize notification, remember these tips:
- Are you being directed to wire money, provide access to your bank account or credit card numbers or to forward any personal financial information in order to claim your winnings?
- Did you actually enter the company's contest?
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Do not be deceived by seals, official-sounding names or terms that imply affiliation with or endorsement by a government entity.
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If you have truly won a prize, there should be no redemption fees, postage fees, delivery fees or other conditional rules to comply with in order to receive your prize.
For many people, winning the lottery is the American dream, but if in doubt, Austin said, always check it out with the BBB at www.gobbb.org.
Why would anyone send money to get a prize??? That sounds kind of fishy from the get go.
Sadly, lots of people do. PT Barnum was talking about these types of people when he made his famous statement.
After reading the story on the BBB site I realize I had gotten a letter like this but it didn't say I won a lottery. It said that my wife was the beneficiary of a large sum of money from a distant relative who passed in 1908 and they finally found my wife to receive the money. They had also said that through the years the interest on the money had made it over 8 million dollars. We were instructed to send a check for $99.00 for processing and 1% of the total payment for a finders fee. I didn't know who to contact about this so I made a copy of the letter and turned it over to the Postal service after talking to Todd on here. I also contacted the Attorney General. I see now I should have also contacted the Better Business Bureau.
I would think that sending money would be a big tip-off to most people. If you didn't enter it odds you didn't win anything and it's a scam.
That's why contests often include in the rules "no purchase necessary".
If it seems too good to be true-- IT IS !!!!!!!
Yeah tomsue, that is a scam. If you didn't enter a drawing or contest and it comes from an email it's fake.
You don't get notified by mail (for winning the lottery) unless you played by subscription.