Dave
New Westminster,#2Consumer Suggestion
Thu, October 26, 2006
It's good that you investigated a little before falling any further into this scam. There's a lot wrong with the scam that should alert people that there isn't a pot of gold coming their way. - address incorrect. The postal code does not belong to British Columbia. - phone number area code does happen to match the address in SK. So they did one thing right. - company name on check different than name of Lottery. - company name on check different than name of supposed company in charge of distributing funds. - secrecy. Lotteries want publicity from the winners. Advertising. - taxes to be paid to an individual. Taxes are collected by Governments. - Western Union. ANY company who asks for money to be sent to them via Western Union is running a scam of some sort or another. - check delivered in regular mail. It's possible that a lottery might distribute winnings this way, but not when you consider that they'd want pictures of the winners for their Winner's Gallery advertising. - taxes on Lottery winnings. Not in Canada. And where taxes apply, they would be withheld from the winnings, not prepaid before disbursing the prize. (For winning something like a car, it might be likely that the taxes would have to be prepaid. But in that case you'd write a check while sitting in the car.) - foreign lottery winnings. Check the laws where you live. In most cases, it is either illegal to play a foreign lottery, or to win a lottery when you aren't a resident of the same country as the lottery, or both.