Alert Postal Worker Thwarts Scam In Terrace
Terrace, BC – An alert postal worker in Terrace is being praised for recognizing the signs of a fraud scam and saving the potential victim a large monetary loss…
Terrace RCMP Media Relations Officer, Constable Angela Rabut, says, "A strong community is all about watching out for each other. In this instance, the postal worker recognized that a person was probably being scammed, so did not complete the money transfer. The worker advised the person to talk to police first."
Constable Rabut says the woman had recently accepted a friend request on Facebook from a past acquaintaince. This 'friend' then privately messaged the woman to say they had recently won a prize and that she should enter the same contest. The woman did, and received a message saying she'd won a large sum of money. Constable Rabut says the potential victim was then informed she needed to pay the taxes before receiving the prize money and direction was given to send the money via MoneyGram.
"A legitimate contest will never ask a winner to pay any fees upfront to receive a prize, lottery, or sweepstake," cautions Rabut. "The police advised the victim that this was a scam and, fortunately, no money was lost thanks in large part to the awareness and actions of the postal worker."
For more information on recognizing frauds and how to protect yourself, click here.
Comments
Its hard to believe that people are still falling for this one, after how many years of publicity about it?
Posted by: Give more on June 8 2014 6:22 AM
Its hard to believe that people are still falling for this one, after how many years of publicity about it?
———–
People lose all semblance of common sense when greed takes over. Woohoo! I’m going to be rich!
Yup. Greed blinds people. That’s why the same old scams are still around.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just about to help a fellow in Nigeria access the funds in his bank account. :-)
If you are desparate for money, say a senior; this might sound good! Too bad people still fall for it.
Its very easy for us computer users to take for granted what we assume is “common knowledge”. I helped an elderly parents friend set up their first computer recently. As she clicked around a few sites she saw a flashing ad “click here for a free tv!” And thought she had won! If that kind of person was told something from what they believed was an old friend it wouldn’t be hard to scam them.
compared to a lot of different cultures, we as Canadians treat our elderly terrible, insensitively.YOUR govt. of the day does very, very little to help alleviate this problem.SOME of our seniors find it difficult to make ends meet and must resort to eating canned dog food to survive. THIS just isn’t right. SO I can understand why one would fall into one of many scams circulating around to try and win/gain some extra money to try to keep the wolf from the door.
Yeah, t’s easier to blame the government for everything.
I would hope that when (if?) I make it to senior citizen status that I retain some of the wisdom that I’ve accrued over the years.
It may not be much but it’s gotten me this far.
Ice, you should travel the world a bit before you make a blanket statement on how the elderly are treated in Canada compared to other places. Universal health care & other amenities that are enjoyed here are a luxury in other areas of the planet. As for the dog food urban legend, that one has been around since I was a kid. In most stores a can of dog food is more expensive than a can of soup.
Cat food is better anyway!
Comments for this article are closed.