Yesterday I talked about how to enter sweepstakes as a job. Today, I wanted to talk about how to avoid being scammed in this newfound hobby.
Unfortunately, whenever there is money to be made, there are scammers trying to to get their piece of the pie without having to earn it. Since I sincerely doubt we will ever be able to rid the world of scammers no matter how hard the police work, it behooves all of us to become familiar with how they work.
The sweepstakes scam is one of the oldest one out there, and definitely one of the most popular. There are several variations on the same theme:
A. They send you a letter notifying you that you won some obscure sweepstakes (National Sweepstakes!) and that in order to collect the money, you only have to pay a small processing fee which is (ever so nice of them) only a small portion of the winning amount. You send the check in ($500 or more) and you never hear from them again.
B. They send you an actual check worth $100,000 or even more. They tell you to go to the bank and cash it, then send (again) a small portion of the money back to them to pay for your taxes or the processing fee or whatever excuse they can think of. You cash the check (if any bank is dumb enough to actually take it from you) send the money back to them, and then a week later the check bounces higher than a rubber ball could ever dream of and you’re in big trouble. Not only are you out the bounced check fee and the “processing fee,” but you can also have federal charges pressed against you for depositing a fraudulent check. The Feds don’t take this sort of thing lightly.
How can you be sure that the prizes you have won are legitimate? If it was a real contest and a true prize, you would have received a FedEx, UPS, or registered package with dozens of pages to read and sign. You have to take it all to a notary, prove your identity and eligibility, notarize and return the paperwork, and then you’re still going to get a phone call to work out payment or delivery of prize, followed by many faxes, emails and calls to iron out details. They don’t simply mail you a $100,000 check via regular postal mail, to say the least. Anytime you win over $600 worth of prizes, they are required by federal law to report it on your taxes, so at the very least, you should have paperwork for that part. And once you do finally get the check, they will almost always come FedEx/UPS. Again, regular postal mail service just isn’t going to cut it.
Now that you’ve learned the ground rules for avoiding scams, and some ideas of places to enter, I want you to get going and start winning! Best of luck to you!