Opportunity knocks, it doesn’t use phone or email
This is among the saddest stories I’ve heard: a 93-yearold Albuquerque woman who lost $25,000 — more than half of her life savings — to a Publisher’s Clearinghouse scam.
The woman, who didn’t want her name used because she hasn’t told her family, blames herself for being “a trusting old woman.” But the fact is that these kind of scams were ranked the third-most common in 2017, with total reported losses of $95 million.
The thing to remember is that Publisher’s Clearinghouse never calls on the phone or sends an email. They just show up at your house with a very large check. And you don’t have to pay any money upfront for fees or taxes or anything else.
The Albuquerque woman lost her money after the caller told her she had won $8.5 million and a car, but that she needed to send a check for $25 to an address in Mississippi.
She was to fill in the numerical amount in the usual spot at the top right corner of the check but was told to leave blank the line where you enter the amount using words.
She followed the instructions, leading to the perfect set-up for the scammer to ply his trade: He added three zeros after the $25 and wrote in “Twenty-five thousand dollars” on the blank line.
That left the woman with a life savings of $15,000 and no way to get her money back.
To make matters worse, the bogus clearinghouse employees kept calling to tell her when the prize patrol would supposedly come to deliver the goods (it never did, of course) and asking for another $16,000 to pay income tax.
She wised up at that point and refused to pay, but admits that in retrospect the scheme “sounded fishy” early on when the callers insisted that she keep it all a secret.
“I can not blame my age,” the woman said. “I’m 93 and I know better; I just didn’t do better.”
Parents of high school students preparing for college, be forewarned about bogus calls or emails claiming to be from The College Board, which is responsible for the PSAT and SAT tests.
The scammers are asking parents for credit card numbers so they can send test prep materials the student supposedly requested, the Federal Trade Commission says.
They might even have the student’s name, address and phone number, making them seem more believable, the FTC says.
Here’s what to know: The College Board doesn’t ask for credit card, bank account or password information over the phone or via your email.
Gift cards might be fun to get as gifts, but they increasingly have a dark side when it comes to ripping people off.
It’s the No. 1 payment method scammers demand when they’re plying any number of cons — and use of the cards has grown a whopping 270 percent since 2015, according to new figures from the Federal Trade Commission.
So far this year, the most common kind of card requested as a payment vehicle in scams was the iTunes card, followed by Google Play. While iTunes has been a popular favorite for underhanded schemes, Google Play is a newcomer — it hasn’t been reported in signifcant numbers until this year, the FTC said. Other common type of cards scammers request are Walmart, Target, Walgreens and CVS.
The most frequent type of scam demanding gift or reloadable card payment are imposter scams, in which someone will pose as an IRS or other government agent, well-known business or even family member or friend.
Ellen Marks is assistant business editor at the Albuquerque Journal. Contact her at emarks@abqjournal.com or 505-8233842 if you are aware of what sounds like a scam. To report a scam to law enforcement, contact the New Mexico Consumer Protection Division toll-free at 1-844-255-9210.