Complaint Review: VIP Finance - McGregor Lewis - Barbara Hill

On August 9, 2007, I received the following letter from VIP Finance Inc, International Claim Department, 100 King Street, Morristown, Ontario, N0B2C3.

August 6, 2007
Claim No: DH/SUL-0011
WINNING FINAL NOTIFICATION

Sir/Madam/

We are plesed to inform you that you are one of the declared winners of the DELOTTO SWITZERLAND SWEEPSTAKES held on June 15th, 2007 in the 2nd category. Ticket serial No. 387450146 drew the lucky winning No. 38-44-66-79-91.

We have made many unsuccessful attempts to contact you regarding this winning. You are therefore entitled to the sum of $250,000.00 US DOLLARS. This is from a total prize money of $5 Million US dollars that was shared and presented amoung the other 20 declared winners. Please note that all the participants were selected through a random computer ballot system drawn from over 50,000 names.

Your claim number is DH/SUL-0011 and has been assigned to our North American Claims Affiliate. To expedite the processing enclosed is the check of $4800 US dollars which has been deducted from your winning. The sole purpose of this check is for the payment of applicable Government Taxes on your big winnings.

The tax amount is $2975.00 US DOLLAR (TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS) to be paid by either WESTERN UNION OR MONEYGRAM.

Please do not attempt to use this check until you call. You are advised to contact your claim agent immediately for further clarification as indicated below within 5 business days.

MCGREGOR LEWIS, 1-647-219-5517

Congratulations,
Yours Truly
(signature)
Barbara Hill (Promotion Manager)

Check was drawn from a JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. in Dallas, TX 75201, and an email address of www.Chase.Com was on this check.

As I had previously received a similar check from a Company called Alpha Financial Group (although that letter enclosed a check of $2,998.80 and requested a payment of $2,845.00 - an attempt to sweeten the pot and tempt more people?) I just held this letter and check and did nothing.

Then on August 10, 2007 I received an exact duplicate of the above letter except it was dated August 7, 2007, and it enclosed a 2nd check of $4880.00. Now if I had won, the claim department would not have sent 2 notifications with 2 checks to cover one winning amount.

However I carried the matter a little further. On the envelope of all three letters, the two from VIP Finance Inc, and the previous one from Alpha Financial Group, the following numbers were printed at the bottom of the envelope - 4607231126 R002. Then there is the bar code which appears to be identical on all of the above 3 letters.

I will be taking these to the police in the morning as I feel that the multiple reports on this site regarding Alpha Financial Group have caused the scammers responsible for these letters to change the names they are using. However that is only my thoughts and I will be linking Alpha Financial Group with this report also.

Should you receive a check like this DO NOT, WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO, DO NOT CASH THIS CHECK!

Sherrie
Tipton, Indiana
U.S.A.