WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | Check Scam Activity Continues in Coastal Empire
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Get any checks in the mail lately? You know the routine. A letter in the mail, along with a check, claiming you won. But first, you have to cash a bogus check and send money back.
Sound familiar?
It should. WTOC has been warning us about these scams for a while now, telling you what to look out for. However, people continue to fall prey to false hope, and a scammer's dream.
"It was like a windfall," Randy Hackney told WTOC. "Four thousand eight hundred dollars."
For a split second, Randy thought he had really won a sweepstakes lottery.
"We just came back from vacation, I thought this is going to pay the bills," Randy said. "I was tickled, and then my wife said Don Logana did a thing on TV about this. You better check it out."
Randy did some investigating, and found out the company listed on the check does not exist. The notification letter was full of spelling and grammatical mistakes and contained all the red flags of a scam. It had a Canadian address, a request to cash the check and send some back, and it's a lottery Randy never entered.
"You always want to think your check is real, but I know it's not. I'm not going to cash it," Randy said. "I said let's get a hold of WTOC and see what happens."
The Better Business Bureau has received more than 300 check scam complaints since January.
"If you get a check in the mail saying you won the lottery, I'd say 99.9 percent of the time, I can guarantee you, it's fake," BBB president Ross Howard told WTOC.
Howard is shocked at how much the fake check scams have multiplied over just the last few months.
"I can easily say fake checks are the scam of the year," he said.
Howard warns, do not cash any check you get in the mail if you aren't familiar with who sent it.
"If you cash a bad check, and the check is no good, the bank could press felony charges against you because your name is on the check," Howard said. "And more and more banks are doing just that."
Randy may have caught the scam, but like so many, he's having a hard time letting go of what he never had.
"I'm still hoping it's real," randy said. "But I know it's not."
Now listen up, WTOC wants your fake checks. At the end of the month, WTOC will be teaming up with the BBB to bring you the first ever fake check scam shred-a-thon. We'll shred the checks, and experts will be on hand to tell you if the check you got in the mail is real, or a phony.
So stay tuned, we'll have more details about the event coming up in the next few weeks.
Reported by: Don Logana, dlogana@wtoc.com
