I received a check in the mail from Vista Financial Trust in the US Virgin Islands. A letter was with it saying that I had won an unclaimed prize from the Readers Digest Publishers Clearing House. The check was for $1996, and I was told to call a number and then deposit this in my account. After I did this, I was to call the number back and they would schedule FedEx to deliver the remainder of the check, which was $36,000. Is this real?
Most often these are frauds, especially if you haven't entered. In many cases you would be asked to pay some tax or other fee in order to collect your winnings. In this case, there may be telephone fraud as well. While I haven't heard of this recently, there was a scam where a person was asked to return or make a call to an 809 area code. This is a code outside the U.S. and not subject to our laws or (pricing) regulations. The person was held on the line for as long as possible and a huge telephone bill was the result.
BankingQuestions.com is a free service made possible by the generous support of our advertisers. Advertisers are not responsible for site content. Please help us keep BankingQuestions.com FREE by supporting our advertisers. When you see an ad for a product or service you may have an interest in, click through to learn more.
Accounts
Article
Q&A
Podcast
Video
Blog
Discussions
PDF
Powerpoint
Most often these are frauds, especially if you haven't entered. In many cases you would be asked to pay some tax or other 