America is a very rich country. People get letters saying they’ve won millions of dollars and just throw them in the trash.
Yep. That’s me. I won a second prize of $1.3 million and a 2013 Mercedes Benz. But I was feeling lazy and threw the letter in the waste basket.
Our records indicate that your 2nd place prize winnings of $1,300,000.00 and a 2013 Mercedes Benz S350 in the February 2013 American Idol Cable Viewers Sweepstakes has remain unpaid. This letter-serves as a 3rd and final notice for the lump sum payout of your prize. We remain committed to fulfilling our promise in line with the regulations associated with Television Broadcast Competitions.
….
YOU ARE REQUIRED
We strongly request, that you contact the under-listed claims agent to whom we have since forwarded your winning details and provide the Reference Number above. Your assigned claims agent will facilitate the identification, verification, processing and payout of your winnings including payment of all taxes and delivery schedule. All winners must maintain complete confidentiality of their winning details until final payment (Direct bank Transfer or Check) is made to avoid duplicate claims….
I was supposed to have won because I watched American Idol via cable between September 2012 and February 2013. We don’t have cable, and I’ve never watched American Idol. Presumably my claims agent wouldn’t care as long as I gave him my personal information — for verification purposes, of course.
Would you be as lackadaisical as I am?
January 23, 2014
I would indeed. I get one mail every month without fail from the local distributors of the Readgers Digest announcing such nonsense to be taken in by any such mail.
Good for us!
Of course not. We peruse every piece of mail, just in case.
All kidding aside, most of these type scams get shredded — if there’s any personal information — or tossed.
However, some do require a little closer , skeptical look. For instance, notices about insurance or warranties on our car and camper have arrived that look awful official — but they weren’t.
Sometimes mail that doesn’t seem to apply does warrant closer looks. A sister-in-law and her hubby kept tossing notices about nonpayment of bills for a credit card they didn’t have. It turned out to be identity theft. The credit company ended up seizing all the money in her checking account and, since she was a co-signer, all the money in my mother-in-law’s account. Lawyers told them afterward that it would cost more to try to get the money back than they had lost.
It’s hard to believe that your money could be stolen while you’re not precipitating in anything!!!
That’s too bad about your sister-in-law. I would be more apt to have trouble with something like that than to fall for a scam — so I think, at least. Who knows what the future holds?
bikehikebabe,
Unfortunately, identity theft is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the U.S.
oh mike!
what a horror story!
i’m with you monk.
first of all… don’t think i’d even want to be a millionaire.
then on second thought i think of all the wonderful fun and good ways i could give it all away…
don’t think i’ll ever have to worry about it though! LOL.
identity stealing is such a weird thing. very scary stuff.
If identity theft gets much worse it might pay to get credit monitoring to know if anyone is trying something. Or, which I haven’t done in a long time, get the annual free credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax and Transunion. (Official website: http://AnnualCreditReport.com.) If you spread the requests out, one every four months, it’s some protection.
Jean — thanks for the link to annual credit report site. We haven’t looked at any in a long while and never in the detail that this provides. There are no issues shown.
Would you believe that part of the security background check for access to a nuclear power plant is a credit check?
Mike,
I’m not surprised that they look at credit reports for security clearances — they want to be sure people aren’t vulnerable because of financial problems. I am surprised that they’re sometimes so lax doing the checks now. Apparently with so many more things being classified they were taking too long, so the companies doing them were under pressure to get them done faster. A recipe for disasters like Snowden.
The security background check for nuclear plant workers is more for physical security of the plant rather than an intelligence background check. They’re looking for no wants, no warrants, no felony convictions, no felony charges pending, no drug convictions, not on a terrorist watch list, not on a no-fly list, etc. etc….
interesting how email has increased the “scammers” in this arena…such an easy target are some!
Apparently old folks are often great targets. My guess is that’s how I got on the list.
oh yes
The fun part is the Chinglish in some of them.
This particular one was written in good English. I wonder how many of the recipients had actually watched American Idol during the time period they mentioned?