![\"\"](\"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/StenehjemWayne445-300x202.jpg\")
Bismarck\u00a0 (CSi) \u2013 The North Dakota Attorney General’s Office points out that in the last twelve months, elderly North Dakotans have reported losses of more than $366,000 to sweepstakes scams. Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the victims all believed they had won a valuable prize in a sweepstakes but had to pay assorted fees and taxes before the prize could be released to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cElderly individuals who live alone are favorite targets of scam artists and are particularly vulnerable. If the initial call is successful, the scam artist knows they have hooked their next victim, and they get to work, reeling the individual in with empty promises and relentless phone calls,\u201d said Stenehjem. His office has issued numerous warnings in the past few years about sweepstakes scam calls.<\/p>\n
One 80-year old victim was told she had won $2.5 million. The scam artist gave her a phone number to call to \u201cverify\u201d the prize. Over the course of the next several weeks the victim mailed cash, deposited money into a third person\u2019s bank account, and mailed a check to pay various assorted \u201cfees,\u201d all in the belief that she would soon receive her prize money. Only when the victim\u2019s son discovered what was going on and reported it to the Attorney General\u2019s Consumer Protection division did the victim realize she had been conned, but by then she had already sent over $50,000 to the scam artists.<\/p>\n
Another elderly victim only realized he had been lied to for months after he went to meet the prize notification team at the airport to claim his long-awaited prize but no one showed up. By that time, he had sent more than $200,000 to the phony prize notification officials to pay supposed fees and taxes. He reported that the \u201cprize officials\u201d would sometimes send him a money order with instructions to cash it and then wire it onto another person, telling him that they did not want him to be out of pocket. The money orders were counterfeit, and the bank later reversed the deposits.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, these individuals continued to send money, week after week, based solely on assurances made by a total stranger on the other end of the phone,\u201d said Stenehjem.<\/p>\n
Parrell Grossman, director of the Consumer Protection Division, said some of the recent victims had been told they had won a prize from Publishers Clearing House, which is often used by scam artists because of the name recognition. \u201cVictims also reported they had been instructed to keep the \u201cwin\u201d secret and they were even coached on what to say if someone found out and tried to convince them it was a scam,\u201d Grossman continued.<\/p>\n
Stenehjem urged all North Dakota residents to talk to elderly parents and relatives about these scams. He said to remind family members of the following:<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you are asked to pay anything at all before you receive the prize, it is a scam. No legitimate sweepstakes require a winner to pay fees or taxes up front before the prize money is disbursed.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If they send you money to pay the prize fees so you are not out of pocket, it is a scam.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Scam artists like to have victims use alternative forms of payment, such as gift cards, iTunes cards, Walmart-to-Walmart transactions or wire transfers, because they can access the funds instantly and they cannot be tracked.<\/p>\n
For more information on how to talk to elderly parents and relatives about scams, contact the Consumer Protection division at\u00a0(701) 328-3404<\/a>, toll-free (800) 472-2600, or online atwww.attorneygeneral.nd.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bismarck\u00a0 (CSi) \u2013 The North Dakota Attorney General’s Office points out that in the last twelve months, elderly North Dakotans have reported losses of more than $366,000 to sweepstakes scams. Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the victims all believed they had won a valuable prize in a sweepstakes but had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":73978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123469,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123468\/revisions\/123469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}