Brent and Karen Minard may live out in the country, but they’re no bumpkins.
The Startup residents received last week a letter suggesting they had won $250,000 in an international sweepstakes or lottery drawing.
Such letters are a pretty common fraud, but lots of people haven’t heard about them. Brent Minard has made getting the word out on this scam a bit of a personal crusade.
He made copies of the letter and a check for $4,900 and took them to local banks for posting. He has issued complaints with the state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Postal Service.
And, of course, he called The Herald.
“I just want to get the word out,” Brent Minard said. “Several bank managers told me that a lot of old people get sucked up in this scam and they’re out of money.”
The letter, sent last week to Karen Minard from “American Sweepstakes &Promotion Co.”, included the above mentioned check “provided to help you pay for handling, insurance and delivery fees.”
Minard said he called the Chicago bank mentioned on the check and that the bank is real. But when he talked about the check and the letter he’d received, a manager there confirmed the check was a fraud.
“At first they didn’t want to talk with me,” Brent Minard said. “They asked for the numbers off the check. Then they came back and said, ‘Yes, it is fraudulent.’”
A security officer suggested Minard send a copy to postal inspectors to investigate it as mail fraud, so he did.
Sweepstakes fraud is a popular scam in which you’re told you’ve won a good sum of money. Then you’re asked to send a handling fee to receive the big check.
The $4,900 check included in the Minards’ letter is a bit of a new wrinkle. Had the Minards cashed it, they would have been responsible for covering it at the bank once the fraud was discovered.
Brent Minard gave me a copy of the check and I have to admit it looks pretty real. It has a red and blue background and printing that says “This check is void without a blue and red background and an artificial watermark on the back.”
Seeing the check and seeing the letter, which has things like a personal identification number printed on it “for your Account protection,” certainly show that scammers are pretty good at inventing little details that make their offer appear to be legitimate.
When I Googled the company name, I discovered that American Sweepstakes is a real company in New York that does marketing promotions for businesses.
I called the company and when I explained why, what I heard first was a groan.
“We know all about it,” said a man who would identify himself only as Don. “We get multiple calls a year. Multiple calls.”
Don said the company has reported the fraud to authorities only to have the investigation stop at the Canadian border.
“They stole our name and another company’s logo,” he said. “Police traced them back to a phone number in Canada that they couldn’t go any further with.”
Don had some advice for how to determine whether a sweepstakes offer is legitimate.
“Most people don’t know this,” he said. “But by law in this country you’re not obligated to pay anything to get your sweepstakes prize. As soon as they ask you to pay something, it’s illegal.”
So don’t bother to check to see if a company looks legitimate or the mentioned bank looks legitimate or the check looks good. If you get a letter about a lottery or sweepstakes where there’s any suggestion of a fee, just trash it.
As mentioned above, the check is a new twist to the old sweepstakes scam. Typically such bad checks are sent to people selling something. They’re usually for a larger amount than requested. People are then asked to cash it and to quickly send the extra money to someone else for another purpose.
Of course the idea is to get you to send money to someone before you discover you’ve been stuck with a bad check.
Brent Minard said he was immediately suspicious because he doesn’t get involved in things like that.
“We don’t enter sweepstakes,” he said. “We don’t buy lottery tickets.”
As I mention regularly, experts say you should be highly suspicious of offers coming in the mail, by e-mail, by telephone or in person that you didn’t initiate.
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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