By Mary Corrado
Editor
The phone rings, and a voice on the other end congratulates you for winning...$250,000, in the Australian lottery! What a windfall, what great luck, what joy! In the excitement, you fail to question how you can be a winner when you never bought a ticket in any such lottery.
A letter arrives, confirming the phone conversation. In the pleasurable anticipation of money, you fail to notice the ungrammatical form and misspelled words of the letter.
With the letter is a check for $20,000 to enable the recipient to pay "for the government fees that is applicable to your winning." So far, so good, you think. But then you receive a call. Whoops, they sent you a check for too much by mistake! You need to reimburse $10,000 of that money, right away please, so go to the bank and deposit it tomorrow and immediately send a MoneyGram for $10,000 back to the "lottery officials." You fail to consider that this time frame does not permit the check to clear first. As you send off the MoneyGram, you fail to realize that this is a particularly difficult item to put a "stop payment" on.
In a couple days, you receive decidedly less upbeat news, this time from the bank. The $20,000 check was counterfeit. You have gained nothing; on the contrary, you have lost your own precious $10,000.
Remarkable as this scenario sounds, it is happening on the North Side of Chicago. A customer fell for this fraud in the first week of August, said Ron Tragasz, Executive Vice President, Operations, of the Community Bank of Ravenswood, 2300 W. Lawrence Ave.
The letter which arrived at the customer's home had been embellished to make it look official. It bore a letterhead purporting to be from the Australian Lottery, with stars as a logo; a Claim Number of several letters and numbers; some impressive words such as "stipulate" and "hence" and "as regards"; phone numbers; and a statement that "The Australian Lottery Pays Out 60% of Revenue in Winnings Compared to Only 45% Paid Out By North American and European Lottos. One phone number led to an answering machine, and the second led to a man who said that this phone number was for a personal cell phone and that he'd never heard of the Australian Lottery. (However, he did reverse the call to see who had inquired; upon hearing this newspaper's name, he hung up.)
The very next week, on Aug. 11, a different customer walked into Community Bank of Ravenswood. He began chatting with the teller, and he too had won a lottery! But there was a different twist; this time it was the Spanish Lottery, and the letter said there was a total of $10,468,770 to be shared among the 17 winners, so the recipient was to expect $615,810. The letter looked official, with an sketch of a globe in the background, a logo, an intricate seal by the signature, even a blurry image of currency. Again large words are scattered in the poorly constructed letter. Elaborate strings of numbers supposedly represent the winning combinations, ticket number, serial number and batch number which have led to a lottery prize "in the 3rd category."
Cleverly, the letter warns the recipient not to share the letter with others: "...keep this award from public notice until your claim has been processed and your money remitted to your account as this is part of our security protocol to avoid doubleclaiming or unwarranted taking of an advantage of this program by participants." Also, the recipient is given little time to reflect on the matter: "...all prize money must be claimed not later than, 09th of September 2004 [because after] this date all funds will be returned...as unclaimed."
In this scam, the recipient is told to pay the taxes on the anticipated winnings prior to receiving the sum. If all goes according to plan, perhaps $10,000 is sent to the "officials" and of course nothing is ever sent to the victim.
Fortunately, bank employees recognized that their customer was falling for a scam, and that his request for a large certified check to mail away would cause quite a loss. They counseled the customer to step away from the scheme and he did so, albeit reluctantly, so as to hang on to his own money.
"The people being victimized are not terribly wealthy," said Tragasz. "They are of modest means and think it's a windfall profit."
The scams join a list of notorious and omnipresent frauds that plague Chicago. Tragasz described one of the most popular:
Someone knocks on your door. "Is Mrs. Hernandez here?" "No one here by that name." "Are you sure? She used to live here." "No, I'm Mrs. Smith and I've been here 10 years." "Oh, she must have moved some time ago. See, I have the winning lottery ticket for $50,000, but I can't go claim it because I'm in the country illegally. I wanted her to claim the prize and then she and I would split it 50-50."
Gradually the visitor spins the tale, then suggests that the resident go ahead and do what Mrs. Hernandez was to do. It sounds like a very easy way to make $25,000. But there is a catch. The visitor is unsure about trusting such a new acquaintance with such a valuable ticket. He says that maybe the resident should produce some "good faith" money, say $5,000, for the visitor to hold on to until the transactions are finished. At this point, the resident takes money out of her bank account to give to the shyster. That's the last she'll see of him, or of her money, of course.
Watch out, says Tragasz. It's happened before and it will happen again. Questions about lottery fraud may be directed to Ron Tragasz, Community Bank of Ravenswood, at (773) 907-8100.
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