International Business
In the past year, two different acquaintances have had experiences with international crooks who are very convincing and smooth in their relationships. They begin with an official looking letter with great news. It appears the person to whom the letter is written has had the good fortune of being a winner in a lottery. Never mind that they haven’t bought a ticket or done anything to get involved with a lottery. Generally, there is no cost to the winner, and the winnings are $250,000 (or some other not too unreasonable amount). Only one small item. The lottery needs to verify that the recipient of the letter is who he/she claims to be. So the lottery needs $500 to do the investigation. It is urgent that the “winner” send the money to the foreign bank (or other) official via Western Union within 10 days for the investigation to go forward. A couple of days later, the “winner” is contacted by telephone by a very smooth talking “official” of the lottery to see if the money has been sent, and explaining what a great lottery this international lottery is. If it hasn’t been sent, more pressure is applied to get it done today! So, why not? It’s only $500, the “winner” thinks, and it might be true. After the initial payment, more and more things have to be paid for, and the calls keep increasing, coming from a variety of people. Meanwhile, the “winner” gets to be on a first name basis with every- body at the Western Union office. Also, the international calls bump up the monthly telephone bill to over $500. In one instance the “winner” paid over $100,000. So if you, or anyone you know gets a similar letter, destroy it immediately. Remember these things-
- You can’t win a lottery without putting up money. It’s illegal.
- Your local police aren’t interested. It’s out of their jurisdiction.
- The FBI isn’t interested. It’s not in their line of business.
- No foreign government is interested in you.
- Usually the names of people and companies provided are fake.
- Google “scam” pages to find a lot of information about various “scam” artists. .
- They are looking for people who are relatively well off so they will be able to send money.
Interestingly, after several months, one participant was contacted by other “officials” wanting him to send more money to a certain address. The caller was a police “official”, and they had recovered a lot of the money that had been scammed, and if he would cooperate, he could recover his money. A letter he received from a bank president confirming this information was determined to be a fake and the company letterhead was not that of a bank.
