|
THE VERY PARTIAL LIST OF PHISHER / SCAMMERS
                                                        
"I Won The British Lotto"
(I also won the
Irish Lotto)
@
www.AssholesAmongUs.com
© Copyright 2006 – David Todeschini – all rights
reserved
On October 19, 2006, I received the following letter in the
(snail) mail. It was accompanied by a check for $2,995.90 which was supposed to be part
of a
$115,500.00 British Lottery windfall (minus a $7,854.00 Sponsor’s Commission)...
well, I'll let you read a verbatim text reproduction (OCR-scanned) of the letter
and look at a copy of the check (sans the check watermarks) before I continue
this tirade....
ROYAL BRITISH LOTTO
BRITISH RANDOM DRAWS
AWARD
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify
that:
David Todeschini
Ret: #000 832321 Z030
Winner Code: FG4482
DATE:
OCTOBER 14, 2006
We are pleased to
inform you that after the just concluded ROYAL BRITISH RANDOM LOTTO held in
London, England, that you emerged as one of the winners of the British Random
Draws International. Participants were selected through a computer ballot system
draw from one million two hundred thousand names (1,200,000) drawn from Asia,
Europe and North America. Your name attached to ticket number 704-8043 with
serial number 264-15126 drew the lucky numbers of 18-32-9-25-37 which
subsequently won the lottery in the third category. You have therefore been
approved for the lump sum of $115,500.00 USD (ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN THOUSAND
UNITED STATES DOLLARS ONLY). This is from a total cash prize of $2,450,500.00
USD (TWO MILLION FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS)
shared among (Twenty- three) international winners in different categories.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Assistance check of
$2,995.90 is enclosed to enable you finance the international clearance fees of
$2,846.50. Your clearance fee should be remitted to our designated
North American Agent. Consequently, you will
receive a total of $115,500.00 minus $7,854.00(6.8%
Sponsor’s Commission). Invariably, you will receive a total of
$107,646.00. Your agent will give you further details.
We ask that you keep
this award from public notice until your claim has been processed and money
remitted to your account, as this is part of our security protocol to avoid
double claiming or unwarranted taking of advantage of the program by the
participants and the public.
To begin your lottery
claim, contact your claim agent, MONICA BROWN,
of Zenith Financial
Management Group at 4485 GATEWAY BLVD. NW, STE
305, EDMONTON, AB T6H 503, an accredited agency to BRITISH MEGA LOTTO at
TEL:1-780-604-8272
Note that
all prize money must be claimed not later than OCTOBER 30, 2006. Ensure you
contact your agent for the
ACTIVATION AND
AUTHORISATION
of your check.
CONGRATULATIONS ! Once
more.
JOHN LAWSON
PRIZE CO-ORDINATOR
See:
www.FakeChecks.org - to learn how to
spot scams involving fake checks mailed to you.
Now I'm one of those people who NEVER won a damn thing. I play the NY State
Lotto when it goes above 20 Megabucks. I figure if I'm gonna' get lucky, I
wanna' hit "the big one", and it would be "a wrap" until I shuffle off this
mortal coil. Well, $115K is certainly NOT
"the big one"; it won't even buy you a ramshackle shell of a fixer-upper house
around these parts... but it WOULD buy several new PCs and some more really neat
techno-toys. This sum - a tad more than a decent pittance - is enough to make
the "win" believable to those like me, who have never won a &$#@!-ing thing, and
cause them to act on the fraud letter without investigating first.
Once a year - maybe - I
might get TWO out of SIX numbers on the Quick-Pick.... and don't you people who
know I'm a preacher, get on my case about gambling being a sin. Look at the Old
Testament. How many times did Moses draw "the short straw" so-to-speak?
I'm not gambling; I'm TITHING. I know my
chances of winning anything are greater than one in 1 x 10140.
"Render unto Caesar...." Like many people, I
often enter these Internet-based "contests", and for all the Sony Vaio laptops I
was supposed to get for FREE, I figured this might be one of those spam-contests
I was ASSHOLE enough to fill out when I was distracted by a pop-up, or had
nothing else better to do.... but I never bought a British Lotto ticket, and was
racking my brain-pan to figure out WHERE this could have come from.
I decided to get a
second opinion. I showed the letter to Jozi, and he said
"sign the check (which is a real check)
and deposit it today.... and by the way.... your rent
just went up". Some help HE was! (but that's why he's the CHIEF
ASSHOLE, and I'm just a lowly Lieutenant Commander).
In any event, to avoid
becoming a BIGGER asshole, I fired up my notebook, started my
Maxthon browser, and typed
"Royal British Lotto John Lawson" into the
search window. A few seconds later, twenty or more tabs open up, and I
discovered this whole thing was some kind of fraud - the URLs where I discovered
this information, and a reproduction of the most significant findings are
reproduced below. Too bad. I could have used the money.
I don't know how I
could be entered into a Lotto game anonymously. I wanted to know who the "sponsor"
was, and why this "sponsor" would buy
ME a British Lotto ticket instead of just
playing (him)self. I also wondered why this check came from
WAREHOUSE CONCEPTS Inc. instead of the British
Lotto Commission. Questions, questions, and more questions. The "normal" human
reaction to a small windfall is to go cash the check immediately. Had I done so,
I could have spent the night in the 114th Precinct jailhouse eating stale frozen
(crystallized) peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until
the truth was discovered. No thanks! The check was a REAL check - only it was
STOLEN.
Needless to say, I
wasn't surprised - but I WAS a bit disappointed. I am loathe to go into the
aspects of innocent human gullibility that causes people to fall for such
outright frauds. These unscrupulous people target poor, innocent people, some of
whom have struggled all their lives in anticipation of "The American Dream" (or
the British version); for their "ship" to come in.... like Ralph Kramden, who,
when he found a suitcase of money on his bus, promptly quit his job and ordered
a boat with THREE propellers. I ain't greedy.... All I want is a Hummer H-3.
The following is a
similar complaint I found on
http://ripoffreport.com
I
received a check in the amount of $2,998.80. The letter I received stated that I
had one $115,500.00 in the Royal British Random Lotto. All I had to do was cash
the check and send the company $2,834.50 in international clearance fees and
they would instruct me on how to collect my remaining $107,646.00.
Lucky
for me I researched this company before acting on this offer. My check was
written from a company in Oregon named: Christian Copyright Licensing
International.
After reading some of the
complaints on this website I realized that each person had a different company
name on their check and a different person to contact. Mine was a man named John
Lawson.
I have
filed a report with the FTC and suggest that anyone receiving a check in this
manner do the same.
Erin
Crystal lake, Illinois,
U.S.A.
How many people have
been swindled by this fraud? We may never know. I did a Yellow Pages search for
the company "Warehouse Concepts Inc." and found their phone number. I called on
Saturday and left a message. I am waiting for a callback on Monday. I will
update here. See:
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/yellowpages/ypresults.jsp?t=0&v=2&s=1&q=Warehouse+Concepts+Inc.&st=MD&zp=20763&_requestid=161579
If you have a check from Warehouse Concepts you may want to contact them and see
what can be done to put the people stealing these checks behind bars. See:
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/yellowpages/ypresults.jsp?t=0&v=2&s=1&q=Warehouse+Concepts+Inc.&st=MD&zp=20763&_requestid=161579
  
UPDATE: 10/23/06
On Monday, I called Warehouse Concepts again, and spoke to a
personable young lady who had dealt with others who have received similar
checks. She told me that one of the “Lotto” recipients DEMANDED that the company
make good on the check. Yes, there are Assholes Among Us! – believe it! In any
event, I offered to return the check if it would be helpful, and she thanked me
for my trouble. I am forwarding the check, the letter, and a copy of this
article to Warehouse Concepts Inc. I hope they get a laugh out of it and pass it
on. Luckily, the company lost no money in this scam, but there are certainly a
few people who received these checks in the mail and were not skeptical, fell
for the ruse, and sent their own money to the address in the letter, and are
waiting for their (stolen) checks to clear. In addition to the fact that the
checks will not clear, the scammers now have the bank numbers (from the personal
checks) of all the people who sent them money. Scams like this are FEDERAL
CRIMES because in addition to stolen checks and forgery of signatures (an
individual STATE issue), the US mail was used to deliver the letters – that’s
MAIL FRAUD – and so the perpetrators, when they caught (and they WILL be caught)
will spend time in BOTH State and Federal “correctional” facilities. “Bubba” is
waiting with a jar of Vaseline™.
UPDATE: 01/06/07
On Saturday Jan
6th I also won Microsoft's European Lotto - My
question is why is it that I am not presently on the French Riviera checkin' out
the babes and suckin' down Pina Coladas?
| 
