COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Many of our viewers have contacted us about suspicious winning sweepstakes letters they’ve received. One local couple says the people behind these fraudulent letters are getting more aggressive.
When it comes to these phony winning sweepstakes letters, make no mistake the fraudsters have specific targets in mind who they want to steal from. The checks have the specific address information and names of their targets to make it seem real. Now we’re learning about relentless follow up phone calls that try to encourage people to take the bait, or give up their sensitive information.
"I was thinking… wow, how exciting. Let’s see, how am I going to spend this? That was my first thought," said Antoinette Seiler when she got the sweepstakes letter in the mail. "It didn’t last long.”
Craig and Antoinette Seiler say the same day the letter came their phone started to ring too.
”They called and said, you know, you need to call the claims manager so that we can get this," Craig said. "So they didn’t wait for us to call.“
The couple says the calls kept coming one after another for multiple days.
“You need to make up your mind, you need to move to the next thing," Antoinette described the calls.
Finally they decided to take the letter down to their local bank to get some answers from fraud experts.
Well, let’s go down and see what the bank has to say about this check," Craig said. "They went through some checking and came back and said this is not real. This is a fake and they wanted to know if they could have a copy because they were interested in it too.”
Craig and Antoinette say they’re concerned about others in the community who may be facing this alone.
“At least we were able to talk to each other and kind of discuss it, so I think it would be more difficult for someone alone who didn’t have someone to share the information with," Antoinette said.
Craig says now when his phone rings and it’s someone he doesn’t know, his approach is always the same.
”Don’t get involved with it. Just hang them up.” he said.
Reporting fraud and scam experiences are important for education and crime prevention. Here are some of the ways you can report experiences like this.
Colorado Attorney General's Office:
https://www.stopfraudcolorado.gov/about-consumer-protection/report-fraud.html
Report fraud to the FTC:
https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/
Reach out to News5 with questions to help us in our consumer protection reporting and to get results:
https://www.koaa.com/about-us/contact-news5/newsroom-contact
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