I recently received a sweepstakes letter from a Mr. Charles hamilton Sr. of Hamilton Moore & Associates in Toronto Canada. In this letter I was informed that I was the "sole recipient" of 490, 000 and they had been desperately trying to reach me to inform me of my winnings.
I was further informed that I woudl receive a bonus prize of a pair of pearl earings as apparently the contest was as part of a promotion for a jewlery company.
Needless to say, as I had not entered any contests I found this all more than a little suspect. I was told that to claim my prize I must post 19.95 to the company in the envelope provided. This is where it became quite clear that the whole thing was a scam as one of the payment options in additiona to credit card or cheque was cash. There is no company that will ever tell you to send them cash in the post, further you do not have to send in a payment to receive winnings for contests.
I inspected the letter more closely and found there were no phone numbers, web addresses, or e-mail addresses for the company. Further the contest rules ont he back of the cover letter seemed an amalgamation of common contest rules, but not in any way applicable to what they were suggesting on the front page.
The worst thing about this is not everyone will know better than to send these people their money. Further, many will be sending them their account details and/or credit card details. These miserable people a likely making a mint off of people's naivety and most of the people who send their money will be the ones who can't afford to be without it.
I am also very concerned that my name and address is clearly available somewhere to people like this and it makes me wonder if this is perhaps the direct result of recent government blunders resulting in the loss of millions of personal details.
Please if you receive this letter do not be taken in by it. If it sounds too good to be true and you have not entered any contests then it is a scam. Use your common sense and when in doubt just do some research.
Angelee
Luton
United Kingdom
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