Sweepstakes scams offer criminals an old, reliable con

The letter offered terrific news: Roger Brink had won $850,000 and a luxury car in a Publishers Clearing House contest.

The official-looking notification, printed on what appeared to be the letterhead of the well-known magazine marketer (think PCH Prize Patrol), was accompanied by a facsimile of a check — written to Brink in the amount of $850,000 — and a photograph of the sporty white Mercedes he soon would be driving around town.

Brink figured he had hit the jackpot.

In reality, he had been hit by one of the oldest — and most insidious — con games around: the so-called sweepstakes scam.

The scam is a fixture on the Federal Trade Commission’s annual list of top complaint generators. For 2013, it had the dubious distinction of being No. 6 on the list, having triggered 89,944 complaints to the agency last year.

“That number may sound high, but the actual (number of victims) is probably even higher,” notes the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, one of several federal agencies charged with combating the crime.

“Victims of prize or sweepstakes fraud often never report it to authorities. It can be embarrassing, even humiliating, to admit you’ve been had.”

“Winners” often receive a partial-payment check — usually for a few thousand dollars — along with instructions to wire back a portion of the advance to cover insurance, processing fees or other administrative expenses.

Sometimes, scammers don’t ever bother to send a counterfeit check. They simply ask prospective victims to pay the miscellaneous fees upfront, usually via a prepaid card such as Green Dot’s MoneyPak.

Supposedly, in either case, as soon as the fees are paid, the full jackpot will be disbursed. Obviously, it never is.

Year in and year out, older Americans are favorite targets.

AARP says that people 55 to 64 years old are twice as likely as their younger counterparts to fall for sweepstakes schemes. Those older than 65 are almost three times as likely to become victims. Brink is 87 years old. When he called the phone number provided with his prize-notification letter, he was told to remit $6,000 to cover expenses.

To come up with that much money, Brink had to tap his savings and cash out an insurance policy.

As instructed, he then submitted the payment and waited for the promised prizes to arrive at his Mulberry, Kan., home.

“They kept saying, ‘At 3 o’clock today, you’ll have everything — you’ll have everything.’ Well, they didn’t, and I don’t.”

And, barring a miracle, he never will.

The sweepstakes that Brink purportedly won had no ties to Publishers Clearing House, which has awarded more than $223 million in prizes since its founding in 1953.

“Consumers should always remember that, at Publishers Clearing House, no payment or fee is ever necessary to enter or claim a prize,” the New Yorkbased company notes on its website. Brink knows that — now. “I don’t want anybody to know what a damn fool I was,” he said, “but I don’t want anybody else to fall for it.”

Sadly, because of his gullibility the first time around, Brink is more likely to be a target again.

Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, said Brink almost certainly will end up on a list maintained by con artists overseas.

“It’s called a ‘suckers list,’” she said. “They make billions of dollars scamming consumers around the world, and they trade information. A fraudster will call a previous victim and say: ‘I know you lost $10,000. For a mere $1,000, we’re going to help you get all that money back.’

“And that should be a red flag that it is — yet again — another scam.”