Yet another person falls for Nigerian Check Scam

Another local resident has been victimized by a mail scam, prompting McMinnville Police Chief Charlie Sewell to warn people to be extremely careful when sending money.

The latest person to be victimized fell for the popular Nigerian Check Scam. This scam has several variations but one common theme ‘ a person is promised riches, but to get those riches they first have to send money.

‘I don’t see this as much here as I did in the metro Atlanta area,’ said Sewell. ‘Every time this happens, I always ask the person why they thought they needed to put up money. And every time the person says, ‘I don’t know.’ They see a big dollar amount and they lose common sense.’

In this particular mail scam, the victim was told he had just won $100,000 in an international sweepstakes. Enclosed was a check for $2,959.06 to ‘cover the cost of all legal and necessary fees.’

The victim was told to call a phone number with 72 hours of receiving the letter. During the phone call, the victim was directed to send $500 to cover processing fees and to use the $2,959.06 to cover that expense.

The victim sent the $500, and the $2,959.06 check turned out to be worthless.

Sewell said so-called ‘winners’ should never send money in order to claim a prize. And he said residents should review any such offers in the mail very carefully.

‘The thing about this letter is that it’s full of grammatical errors,’ said Sewell. ‘There are mistakes all the way through it. But people don’t seem to notice those things. All they see is the dollar amount.’

Sewell said it’s very likely thousands of people received the exact same letter and worthless check in a process called ‘phishing.’ This is when con artists send out fraudulent offers by either e-mail or regular mail in hopes of getting a few people to bite. The con artists realize most people will throw the offers away, but believe there are some who will fall for the scam.