Around Town by Don Eubank

Well, watch out for this one. I got a check in the mail on my birthday for $3,996. This, the letter said, is to be the money to pay the non-residential tax I owed to the British Lottery Board Officials, for winning The New Castle Lottery—which is $4,800,000 to be shared among 48 winners. My prize award is $100,000, they wrote. The letter goes on and on with lots of legal type talk.

I was told to call a person in Canada for instructions and to deposit the check in my bank account.

This seemed to me to be too good to be true. I did some research on www.Snopes.com (about scams) and there is nothing there yet.

So I called the name that is on the check: OneLegacy. There was no phone number on the check, but I got that number from using Google. It is listed. This is a charitable organization that helps to find body organ donors. I talked to the man who answered the phone. He wasn’t surprised. He told me it was a scam, and emphasized: "Don’t deposit the check," and then he hung up the phone.

So, I went to the bank here in Frazier Park. The bank officer agreed that it was a scam, she has seen some like this but not this particular one. This check sure looks real, very official looking. And here is what the last paragraph says:

"Ensure to be confidential about your lottery wins, to avoid multiple claims from friends and relatives, as it could result to cancellation."

In other words ‘don’t tell anyone,’ because they will probably advise me that it is a scam. And it also says to ‘do it now‘ as my $100,000 claim expires November 6, 2007.

Watch out. You can go to www.FakeChecks.org to see how big this scam is getting. Don’t be fooled.

Fake Check Scheme Comes to Mountain in Many Forms

By Patric Hedlund, Editor The Mountain Enterprise

A local dog breeder reports receiving a bogus check for an amount in excess of the purchase price of her puppy, in a scheme asking her to deposit the check and send a portion to the address of a company that would transport the dog. The bank told her that the check was also a scam.

Numerous "employment opportunities" ads have been flooding into The Mountain Enterprise for the past two months, seeking to place Help Wanted ads for "account agent employees" willing to earn $2,000 a month "with benefits" for little more than depositing checks, keeping a large percentage and passing the rest on to the "company." We have rejected the ads, which follow a distinct pattern, though the supposed companies range from furniture manufacturers to foreign metal goods and tool makers.

Transferring good money from your account to an unknown person before their check clears is never advised, bank officials say.

This is part of the November 02, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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