Edie George, 80, of Granite Falls was dumbfounded when she received a notice in the mail saying she had won $4 million. She’d never been that lucky before.
She sent the notice back with $20 for “processing.”
It was early December. Nothing happened for a few days. Then, all of a sudden, her mailbox was deluged with official-looking winning claim forms and certificates, many from Las Vegas.
Her luck appeared to be changing.
She sent off $20 more, for processing, to another notice saying she had won a big cash prize.
Thoughts of a nice long cruise and leaving money to her children danced through her head – for a while.
Now she realizes she was being conned.
The offers she sent money to “sounded so real,” she said. “I thought I really won it.”
Most victims of the international lottery scam are elderly, who fall for the pitch they see as unexpected windfall late in life. They are persuaded to send their own money off to neighborly voices on the other end of the phone.
Con artists frequently tell their victims they have won the Canadian lottery, using Americans’ familiarity with their northern neighbors to help dampen their prey’s common sense.
Victims are instructed to not tell anyone of their winnings until the money is in their account. Some who suspect they have been taken often are embarrassed to tell what has happened. Others keep hoping to reclaim their money, or part of the prize, and send good money after bad.
The telephone call appeared to be the answer to a lifelong dream for Ross McDowell of the Portland, Ore., area. He struck it rich by winning the lottery – a $2.7 million prize, he was told.
As in George’s case, it was overwhelming news.
“Here I am, an old guy, and I won’t have to worry about my finances anymore,” he thought.
What he didn’t know was the voice on the phone was luring him to financial ruin.
For more than two months, the caller’s repeated telephone calls succeeded in befriending him, massaging his ego and gaining so much of his confidence that McDowell, an intelligent man with all his wits about him, bit hard.
McDowell, 79, mailed $800 to a box in a private mail center in Vancouver, B.C. after being told he’d won the Australian lottery. The money was to pay for legal fees associated with transferring the money.
He was told to send the money to a lawyer at a room number and address on Main Street in Vancouver. The “room number” turned out to be a box at Midtown Mail Box Business Center, where it costs $10 a month Canadian to rent one.
What’s more, the man at the counter, when asked, is quick to assure that the mailboxes are set up with street addresses “so it can be completely anonymous.”
The “lottery official” later talked McDowell into sending off another $9,000 to the same address, supposedly to satisfy U.S. Customs and the IRS.
McDowell never figured he was sending a check to a mailbox.
“That makes me feel stupider than ever,” he said.
But McDowell is one of the lucky ones. Canadian Customs agents working with Project Emptor intercepted the check and returned his $9,000.
McDowell figures he initially put himself on the criminals’ radar by sending $17.95 off to something that purported to be the Australian lottery.
Fortunately, McDowell kept meticulous notes of his conversations with the woman who contacted him – information he passed on to Project Emptor, hopefully adding more pieces to the puzzle leading to prosecution.
In hindsight, McDowell was impressed at how hard the woman worked at getting him to send money.
She said she would deliver the money personally, promising to got out to dinner with McDowell and his wife once she got there. She asked if there was a nearby Holiday Inn, and always asked about the family and the weather.
“She said to put our trust in her because she has been working hard for us,” McDowell said. She frequently closed out conversations by saying, “We’re just like family, and God bless.”
He learned that the old adage is right.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” McDowell said. “You just can’t figure somebody’s going to pile a bunch of money in your lap for nothing.”
In suburban Los Angeles, an 86-year-old man mailed off $175,000 to various international lottery scams, including at least two separate mail drops in Vancouver. His daughter has been struggling for weeks to nail down details of where her father wired the money, and to convince him he hasn’t won a thing. But he has lost about half of his life savings. The woman asked that neither her father’s name nor hers be published.
“My worry is that other hucksters would get his name and hit him up for more,” she said.
She has since taken her father for medical evaluations. Doctors have told him that his decision-making skills are losing their edge and that he should listen to his daughter.
Now, at times, he’s perfectly rational. But “at certain moments he absolutely believes he’s won,” said the woman. “It’s heartbreak at every level.”
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