Posted: Wednesday, February 5, 2014 6:45 am
Q: In mid-December I had a phone call telling me I had won $3.5 million dollars from Publishers Clearing House. To keep me from paying income tax, I needed to give them a cashier’s check for $135. I told them that it was a scam and hung up. Last week I had another call, that I had won $2.5 million and a new car, and needed to get a money card to them for $750. And the man called again later. The public needs to know the con artists are working in our state.
B.W.
Answer: You were right to be suspicious.
As we have written about before, such calls are never coming from the real Publishers Clearing House, for the very good reason that they never contact consumers in advance, over the phone or by email to alert them to a large prize award.
If you win a major prize in their sweepstakes, the PCH Prize Patrol will contact you in person. For smaller prizes, less than $1,000, winners are notified by overnight delivery services such as FedEx or UPS; by certified mail; or, in the case of online giveaways, by email. The company will not request your banking or financial information such as checking account or Social Security numbers.
“At PCH the winning is always free and we never ask for payment of any type in order to collect a prize award,” a spokeswoman for the company told us when we wrote about a similar scam last year. “Our PCH Prize Patrol awards our lucky winners live and in person just the way you see in our famous TV commercials.
“Sweepstakes are free — that’s the law. If someone is being asked to send or wire money; or send a pre-paid green dot “money pak” card, in order to claim a prize they are being scammed.” If you get a suspicious notification and want to check into it, PCH has a fraud hotline at (800) 392-4190.
Another variation to avoid is one in which you are sent a check for a partial prize and asked to cash it and send a portion back to claim the full sweepstakes prize.
“Even though the check is bogus, if you deposit the check the money may be available to you for a short time,” according to a report from PCH. “Under federal law, banks make the funds you deposit available quickly – usually within one to five days, depending on the type of check. But just because you can withdraw the money doesn’t mean the check is good. It can take weeks for the forgery to be discovered and the check to bounce. And that’s what the scam artists are counting on. They hope that if you believe the check is real you’ll be willing to send them money back.”
PCH posts anti-scam alerts at info.pch.com under “Fraud Protection.” There, you can find plenty of information about these types of scams and what PCH is doing to educated and assist consumers. One recent variation of the scam has involved people using the names of members of the “PCH Prize Patrol” that have been seen on TV commercials and even the name of Deborah Holland, the company’s executive vice president, whose name appears in promotional mailers.
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