Southfield, MI – November 17, 2011 -Better Business Bureau (BBB) serving Eastern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula is cautioning businesses and consumers about phone calls that are purporting to be from your BBB about sweepstakes winnings. This is a scam – your BBB does not conduct sweepstakes.
Consumers across the country including Michigan have notified your BBB about this scam which was first identified by a person in Virginia. The calls appear to come from area code 876 out of Jamaica and a person pretending to be a BBB employee claims that the customer has won thousands to millions of dollars or in some cases a Mercedes Benz. The representative states that the BBB is acting as an “agent” to deliver the winnings to them and/or directs customers to www.better-businessbureau.org, which contains misinformation and fraudulent claims. BBB is urging consumers not to visit this site. The official BBB website is www.bbb.org.
Perpetrators of this scam will often call consumers claiming to be with a legitimate agency and state that the consumer has won a lottery or a sweepstakes. The scammer use tactics to lure their victims into providing personal or financial information in order to steal their victim’s identity or they tell potential victims that a check will be sent and that they should wire a portion of that check to a specific location in order to claim the bogus prize money.
Should you receive such a call, please record the number and what is said during the call. Then contact your BBB at (248)-223-9400 or report any information received to BBB’s Scam Portal. BBB will never contact consumers about lottery, sweepstakes, or prize winnings. BBB does not conduct sweepstakes, and will never act as an agent in administering money to a consumer. BBB lawyers are working to find out who is behind this and will take all appropriate action to protect its trademark.
BBB offers the following advice:
- You must enter to win. Remember lottery tickets must be purchased. Sweepstakes usually involve application paperwork that you have personally completed and government grants have a thorough application process as well.
- Never pay any money to collect supposed sweepstakes winnings. If you have to pay to collect your winnings, you’re not winning — you’re buying. Legitimate sweepstakes don’t require you to pay “insurance,” “taxes” or “shipping and handling charges” to collect your prize.
- Never wire money. Scammers pressure people to wire money through commercial money transfer companies because wiring money is the same as sending cash. When the money’s gone, there’s very little chance of recovery. Likewise, resist any push from the caller to send a check or money order by overnight delivery or courier. Con artists recommend these services so they can get their hands on your money before you realize you’ve been cheated.
- Phone numbers can deceive. Internet technology allows con artists to disguise their area code so it looks like they’re calling from your local area. But they could be calling from anywhere in the world.
- Watch the grammar. Scam letters, faxes or emails are often full of grammatical and spelling errors.
- Never provide personal information. Scammers can be very charming and charismatic and will lure or pressure for personal information.
- Foreign lotteries are illegal. Beware of lottery applications or win announcements coming via telephone or mail from outside the country. Foreign lotteries violate federal law and participating in any way is illegal. The only legal lotteries in the United States are state-run.
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The Better Business Bureau Serving Eastern Michigan is a non-profit organization with the purpose of assisting in the protection of consumers and businesses from fraud and unethical business practices in the local marketplace. In addition to its recognized dispute resolution services, BBB maintains reliability reports on the customer service history of more than 80,000 local businesses and provides consumer education materials on numerous topics. BBB provides its services free to the public and its service territory stretches across Eastern Michigan from Ann Arbor through Metropolitan Detroit, Lansing, Flint, upward to Alpena, and covers the entire Upper Peninsula of the state.