She beats Fake Check and Lottery Scam

When she saw the envelope, Angela Jonathan of Lewiston immediately suspected that someone was up to no good. Still, her heart beat a little faster when she read the letter inside that informed her she had won $250,000 in a Canadian lottery. All she had to do was cash the enclosed check for nearly $5,000 and send $2,985 to the lottery company for “Government Taxes.”

In her heart, she wanted the news to be true, but her head knew better. “If I hadn’t watched so many news shows and read so many articles about scamming, I might not have known to be cautious,” she said.

Several area law enforcement and banking executives contacted regarding the letter said that Jonathan’s common sense may have saved her thousands of dollars.

In a fake check scam, they will send you a check and ask you to send cash over. After the check clears, you send the money over and spend the balance. Then the bank informed you that the check is a counterfeit and you have to return all the money. The checks are usually in small amount of several thousand dollars so that they don’t get attention from the bank authorities.