Nicole Miller
Contributing Writer
Although it is tax season, Jennifer Warner knows the $5,000 check in her St. Petersburg mailbox is too strange to be a refund. The cashier’s check is from Westbury Bank, with an attached letter explaining how to collect the entitled sum of “$250,000 U.S. dollars.”
“I get so many junk emails, but to actually have something sent to my house — you know, something in hand — that was kind of scary,” Warner said. The letter declares her a winner of the De-Lotto Switzerland Sweepstakes and urges her call a foreign phone number within five business days.
“Scammers have the ability to create very professional-looking, fraudulent checks,” said John Zajac with the Better Business Bureau of West Florida, Inc. Zajac said many check scams start with a letter in the mail from a fake lottery or sweepstakes that asks the victim to cash the winning check and wire some of the money back to cover fees or taxes.
“Scammers know that tracking money sent via Western Union or any other wiring service is difficult,” Zajac said. Warner’s letter said to cash the first $5,000 of the winnings, but then pay $2,900 back through Western Union for government tax and insurance.
“If I would have cashed it and sent their $2,900, there would be no paper trail through Western Union,” she said. “I would’ve owed the bank, plus whatever penalty they wanted to give me for cashing a fraudulent check.”
Zajac said victims don’t know the winning check is going to bounce because most banks credit an account until a check clears. When victims see the temporary credit, they wire the tax money as instructed and then the check bounces, he said, leaving them to pay the bank for the hundreds or thousands of dollars they wired.
In 2010, lottery and sweepstakes scams ranked as one of BBB’s Top 10 Scams and Rip-Offs for the second year in a row. News reports show that the sweepstakes has popped up in other areas, like San Diego, as early as 2006.
“The De-Lotto one has been going on for a long time, but it’s not the same person running it,” Zajac said. He said criminals tend to share scamming formats to create lottery, loan and over-payment schemes.
Sue Garman, the senior vice president of operations at Westbury Bank, said the first call concerning a fake Westbury Bank check came from New Jersey last month—the same time Warner received her check in St. Petersburg.
“All it takes is for somebody to get a check in circulation and make a copy,” Garman said. She added that it is important to know that counterfeit checks showing a real bank’s identity do not indicate a breach of bank security.
“We’ve gotten many many calls, and unfortunately, some people fall for that,” Garman said. “There’s always that glimmer of hope.”
Things to remember about check schemes:
- Never wire money to someone you don’t know.
- A legitimate lottery or sweepstakes would never ask you to wire back money after receiving the prize.
- Look for red flags in suspicious mail: Contradicting dates, inconsistencies between company location and where the envelope was mailed from or international phone numbers.
- Banks can hold you responsible for cashing a fraudulent check.
- Being involved in money schemes can also put you at risk for identity theft.
- Do online research, check with your bank or contact the Better Business Bureau if you have questions about possible scams.
