On 6/30/07 I received a letter in the mail advising me that my ticket had been drawn in a lottery which had been held in Dublin, Ireland. Now I have entered a lot of lottery and sweepstakes, but I'm not aware of entering any outside of the United States of America. Also I had recently been scammed with some very real appearing travelers checks from American Express.
So I looked up the company which the check, in the amount of $2, 998.80, was supposedly from, Carson Toyota in Carson CA. There was a company by that name located at the address noted on this check. I then attempted to locate the bank the check was written on. It appeared to be Scion, with a PO box in Brea, CA. I attempted to locate this bank in the internet but could not locate a bank by that name at the address noted on this check.
So I called the contact number for Alpha Financial Group of 1-780-604-6290 and asked for Jennifer Parker, who was noted in the letter to be my claim agent. When the phone was answered a woman took my information and asked if I could call back in 5 minutes. I advised that I could. When I called back 15 minutes later, the voice message answering machine which came on advised me that this company was in until 7:00 PM monday through Friday, and until 6:00 PM on Saturday. As it was Saturday, and as my time was after 6:00 PM I left my information as to who I was calling and my number. I advised that I had just spoken to someone who had told me to call back in 5 minutes.
About 10 minutes later I received a call back from a woman who advised that she was Jennifer Parker and was returning my call. She advised me that I needed to deposit this check and then call her back as to who to send the payment of $2, 845.00 for international clearance fees to. I advised her that I had recently been involved in a scam with travelers checks which were counterfeit. She calmly advised me that this check was valid and this was the real thing. She told me to deposit the check and wait for it to clear, for my peace of mind, before calling her back to find out where to send the clearance fees.
I was still skeptical so I attempted to look Alpha Financial Group up under the Canadian White pages. When I entered this company's information I immediately found multiple fraud notices and rip off notices posted. So I went in an read some of them. I found that I had received the exact same letter and check just from a different company and with a different agent contact name.
I hope that the FBI and/or other police agencies involved in scams apprehend the individual or individuals behind this scam and put them in jail and throw away the key!! Any person who plays on dreams to defraud those unfortunate people out of their hard earned money should be shot!! That's all I have to say on this matter. I was one of the lucky ones who did not get defrauded!!
0 comments