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Elderly man makes the right call on lottery scamNews Story
In the Star-Telegram Watchdog column, Dave Lieber recounts how an 86-year-old man did the right thing by not getting hooked in by lottery scammers again. For more than a year, George Kahak has followed my request that he call me before investing any more money in get-rich schemes. The 86-year-old former chief pilot for American Airlines is a compulsive scam victim. He's lost tens of thousands of dollars in dozens of scams. The other day, he called to say that he won $500,000 in a lottery a
Dec 14, 2009, 8:19 am - Lottery News

Police arrest four in Chicago lottery ticket scamNews Story
Police arrested two men and two women earlier this week who allegedly ran a lottery ticket scam that targeted elderly Hispanic victims. The four worked as a team and typically sought out elderly Hispanic victims at stores and on the street, according to a release from the Chicago Police. The suspects would approach a victim two at a time and explain they were illegal immigrants and had a winning lottery ticket of more than one million dollars. They would then offer to share the winnings if
Nov 8, 2009, 8:53 am - Lottery News

$25M lottery scam aimed at elderly bustedNews Story
The feds on Tuesday dismantled an Israeli boiler-room operation that conned elderly U.S. victims out of $25 million by telling them they'd won a sweepstakes lottery. A dozen members of the international telemarketing ring were named in a three-count fraud indictment handed up yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court. Prosecutors say ring members bought more than 185,000 names from U.S.-based brokers to find victims to dupe into turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to claim the
Jul 22, 2009, 6:51 pm - Lottery News

Joint task force created to stop Jamaica lottery scamsNews Story
The feds are cracking down on Jamaican lottery scams, which bilked Americans out of more than $30 million last year, authorities said Tuesday. The brazen con artists are transforming the tropical getaway into a fraudsters paradise pulling in untraceable cash to finance the drug and gun trades with impunity, officials said. It's just an incredible amount of money that's coming down here, said Vance Callender, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement attache at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.
May 27, 2009, 3:25 pm - Lottery News

Arkansas lottery retailers to be policed for fraud, officials sayNews Story
The legislation laying the groundwork for Arkansas' lottery does not require it, but officials say they expect the lottery system to include a security division that will be on the lookout for fraud by retailers. The problem of fraud by lottery retailers gained new attention in the U.S. in the wake of a 2007 scandal in Canada, where investigators found that retailers and their employees were winning a disproportionately large number of prizes. Between 1999 and 2006, at least 78 retail owne
May 19, 2009, 8:32 am - Lottery News

Man loses house in lottery scamNews Story
Police have revealed that an elderly man from south west Scotland has lost his home to a foreign lottery scam. Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary made a renewed appeal to the public to be aware of the danger of bogus letters. They said two people in the region had recently lost significant sums of money with one of them actually ending up losing his own property as a result. Police warned the public never to give out bank details to anyone offering to give them significant lottery winni
Apr 4, 2009, 9:18 am - Lottery News

More Calif. stores accused of stealing customers' lottery prizesNews Story
Perhaps you're not quite as unlucky in the lottery as you thought. That scratcher ticket you tossed? Well, it just might have been a winner with the cash prize going to none other than the store owner or clerk you passed it off to as garbage. Ten retailers and clerks are accused of trying to cash in customers' winning lottery tickets at three locations in San Jose, two in Milpitas and one in Santa Clara. Nine people were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of felony grand theft of lottery ticket
Mar 6, 2009, 7:59 am - Lottery News

Lottery retailers busted in raidNews Story
Store owners, clerks accused of stealing winning tickets Lottery officials raided several mini marts Tuesday in Fresno, California. Owners and clerks were taken away in handcuffs after undercover investigators say the suspects cheated would-be customers by lying about winning tickets. Late last year officers posing as consumers showed up at many local mini marts to test their honesty. More than a dozen store owners and employees failed. Today, authorities caught up with them at the busi
Jan 22, 2009, 11:45 am - Lottery News

Woman scammed out of $400,000 pursuing lottery-sized fortuneNews Story
This may well be the mother of all Internet scam cases. Janella Spears, a reverend and a registered nurse from Sweet Home, Oregon, ended up sending Nigerian fraudsters more than $400,000 when she was promised a multi-million dollar pay out from a lost relative. When she began to doubt she was sent letters from the FBI Director, the US President and the President of Nigeria. She still thought it was genuine and ignored the pleas of her family and law enforcement officials in the US. She
Dec 9, 2008, 1:23 am - Lottery News

Florida woman loses $40,000 in lottery ticket scamNews Story
A South Florida elderly woman was scammed out of thousands of dollars in an alleged lottery ticket scam, police said. Pembroke Pines police said that on Oct. 24 Aydee Suarez-Ospina, 72, was approached by the a Hispanic man and woman at the Bravo Supermarket at 12141 Pembroke Road. Police said the man told Suarez-Ospina that he was in possession of a winning lottery ticket and needed assistance in claiming the prize because he was not a U.S. citizen. The female suspect, pretending to overhe
Dec 5, 2008, 4:42 pm - Lottery News