Here’s the text of the letter:
OK… what gives? I’m unfamiliar with this kind of scam. I googled some of the terms in the letter but found nothing. There is indeed a check enclosed.
The postmark is Canadian and the “verification number” is a Canadian area code. I found something briefly on the FTC website about “foreign lottery scams,” but can someone explain to me how this gem works? Where does the lottery part come into the scam?
Heck, e-mail me the 514 number. It’s local to me and I’d like to see what the Montreal office of the IRS looks like.
I believe when you call you’ll be asked for a lot of personal info, SSN, bank account numbers, etc. There are people who do fall for this.
This Snopes article pretty much explains how this scam works.
The really sad thing is often the poorest of the poor fall for this bullshit and wind up having to pay back huge amounts to their bank. One of my students told me her grandmother fell for it and lost much of her life savings.
This begs the question of what happens if I were to cash this check outright at one of those “check cashing places”?
I got one of those a couple of years ago. I felt so proud – my first snail mail lottery scam.
atomicbadgerrace - You’d end up having to owe the money back to the cheque cashing place. (They generally require your vitals, so they know who you are and where you live.) You’ll probably also owe for whatever fees the bounced cheque incurs.
Moving forward, to whom should I notify of this incident? Postmaster? FTC? Some… similar Canadian agency?
Would it do any good?
The check is drawn on Comerica Bank (routing number 072494786), or so it claims to be, anyway. Perhaps I should let Comerica know?
Don’t you know that if it sounds too good to be true, it surely isn’t?
I would try that!!
Did you call the numbers?
I’ve never seen one of these from Readers’ Digest…did you enter any Readers’ Digest stuff?
Reader’s Digest will contact you if you won, via certified letter, using the exact name and address of your subscription. I used to work for the auditor’s department there.
Seriously, what company would ask YOU to call them if they want to give you a huge sum of money. Are we to believe that they don’t sufficient staff to handle the umpteen phone calls from folks who win $650,000?
This is a scam. Don’t call the numbers.
You don’t win competitions you never entered. It’s really that simple.
It’s an advance fee scam - the check will not be cashable - you’ll contact them, they’ll apologise and ask you to pay some fees - and they’ll issue another un-cashable check, etc - or some variation on that theme.
Update:
I called Comerica Bank this morning to see what they wanted me to do with the check drawn on (or purporting to) their bank. Their fraud department basically told me that if I suspected fraud, I should just deposit the check as normal and wait a few weeks to see if it clears. :smack: They didn’t want any information from the check, the check itself, or anything to do with it.
I suppose all I can do now is file a complaint with the FTC and let it go from there, if anywhere.
Does anyone know if any law enforcement agency in Canada would like this information, as well?
I went to rcmp.ca and found this:
I don’t think you’ve been victimized per se, but they might appreciate a copy of the e-mail.
I’ll poke around tomorrow on that site. It wasn’t an email-- it was a real letter accompanied by a check I received in the mail. Postmarked from Canada. Referencing Canadian telephone numbers.
Eh. 
Yes, of course. My mistake.
This is a standard lottery scam.
If you call, the claims agent will ask you to send back all or part of the 50K+ as a processing fee. They will claim it is required because of the international nature of their lottery. Their hope is that the check will not be returned to you as fraudulent until they have your very real money.
There are two sets of victims here.
The first, not so innocent, victims are the people who let their greed override any common sense they might possess and figure, what the heck, let me try this and see what happens. They generally lose 3K to 5K, which seems to be the average amount of the processing fee. I think they deserve to be out every cent they lost and I am glad to see banks are setting penalties for folks that deposit these checks. Honestly. would any reasonable person not overwhelmed with greed believe this “we put the names of everyone in the world in a hat” line?
The real victims are the owners and employees of the company whose ID was stolen. These fake checks are forged with the account information of real companies. The name of the real company is probably on the face of the check somewhere. You should call the bank to make sure the account number matches up with the name on the check…it probably will.Then you should call this company DIRECTLY and tell them you received a check for lottery winnings on their account.
Someone did this to my company. Of the hundreds of people that received these forged checks only ONE called us to verify and our name and phone number was on the check (hidden in small print). Because we got this call, none of the checks went through, athough we had to go through the exercise of closing all our accounts and opening new ones. Luckily, the banks are getting good at recognizing these forgeries.
If the forgery is not realized right away, then all the legitimate checks written by this small business will bounce, causing their vendors and employees not to be paid. It never ceases to amaze me how many people will deposit these checks, figuring there is “no harm” in seeing if they go through. This is willful ignorance at its worst.