One of the latest forms of a scam is not found on the Internet, but in your mailbox.  It goes like this:

You receive a letter from a company telling you that you were the winner in a lottery draw.  This is usually from a company that is from a foreign country.  They tell you the amount of the money you have won, and inform you that they have enclosed a check, which the amount has been deducted from your winnings.  You need to pay the Non Resident Government Tax, and they provide you the contact person’s name and address who is the Tax Agent.  Of course the check amount is greater than the amount you are to send to the Tax Agent.  They want you to cash the check and send the lesser amount to the Tax Agent.  You are to send the money via Money Gram, not mailed to the Tax Agent.  As an example, let’s say the check is for $4,800.00.  The amount of the tax you are to send the Tax Agent is $2,950.00.  This is the first part of the scam.

The second part of the scam is the check is drawn on a different company than the company notifying you of the lottery winnings, and is from a company in the country you live.  If you check the name of the company notifying you of your lottery winnings, and the name of the company that has supposedly issued you the check, you will find both companies are usually real companies, and exist in the city/state/country listed on the letter and check. 

So if both companies are real, then why is this a scam?  The address for both companies will be wrong.  They will use a different street number (instead of 2341 it will be 2143, and in most cases there will be spelling errors in the street name or city name.  As an example:  Instead of Chelsey Street it will be Chelsay Street, and instead of Phoenix, it will be phoenix; or the street address does not exist. 

Once you cash the check, your bank will usually make the funds available to you to withdraw from within 48 hours or less if a weekday when depositing.  As soon as you cash the funds and wire the money using the Money Gram, you just lost the amount you wired.  And yes, about 10 days later you will find that the check is NSF, or in most cases it is a fake.  Now you are not only out the money you wired, but you must also make the total amount of the check good.  Failure to do so puts you at risk of having charges filed against you since you are responsible for your checking account.

So if you get one of these letters and checks, what should you do?  Here are the things you must do:

I know this scam is going around because I received one in the mail.  Since I am fully aware of these type of scams, I was able to know immediately this was a scam.  BUT, unless you looked really close, you would not have known they had a street address that was slightly different than the real company’s address, and the other small typo’s that are easily overlooked.  In my case, both the company advising me of my lottery winnings, and the company on whom the check was drawn were real companies, and were in the cities listed on the letter and check.  It was the street address that was different, and the name of the city was not capitalized.  I was able to determine this as I looked both companies up through Google and 411.com directory listings.  I also checked the phone number given for the Tax Agent, and found out it was a cell phone number, not a land line.  The company letterhead they used was an exact replica of the real company, as was the way the company on whom the check was drawn was an exact replica of their checks.  After speaking with the company, I learned the check numbering used on the check was not how they numbered their checks.   In both cases the companies were not aware their good names were being used to scam people.  That’s why you need to contact them to let them know so they can also contact law enforcement agencies to protect themselves.

My reason for telling all of you this is because these look real, and you can easily be fooled into thinking they are real.  You must really do your due diligence to keep from being scammed by these type of letters and checks.  It is better to call the company and confirm, than fail to do so and lose thousands of dollars.