I was contacted by telephone on approximately June 15, 2011, and told that I had won 3rd prize of $360,000 in a sweepstakes. Because I had entered a sweepstakes in March for that amount of a 3ed prize, I really thought it was legitimate. I was told at that time that all taxes would be paid for me before I received the prize, and I would be contacted again in a few days. I did receive another call in a few days telling me that they had deposited $217,000 to my VISA card account. They had my VISA card number. When I asked how they got that number, Marshall (the representative) said that VISA was one of the sponsors of the sweepstakes, and they had access to VISA records. I thought that was strange, but did not question him further. In checking on my VISA card balance on May 18, I found that $17,000 had been deposited to my account. Marshall then called and said he needed to transfer these funds to my Chase Bank checking account, and that he would do so after I gave him my bank account numbers, which I foolishly did. On May 22, I received anot her call from Marshall who instructed me to go to my bank and withdraw $8,000.00 in cash which was then to be sent via UPS overnight delivery to a "broker" who would be paying the taxes for me. I did this on May 23. The next day, I received another call asking me to withdraw $9,000 in cash and send it in cash by UPS to the same man. When I asked why these "tax" payments had to be made in cash and in two separate delieveries, he said that was what the "broker" preferred. I sent this money to Robert Jackson, 10 S. 15th Ave., Suite 3, Mt. Vernon, NY 10510. I felt O.K. with doing this because this was not actually my money. It had been deposited by the Sweepstakes Association.
As time went by, I checked periodically on my VISA account balance, and found that deposits of $20,000 had been made to my VISA on June 9, $18,800 on July 8, $19,500 on July 19, and $20,000 on July 27. On July 28, I found out that all of these checks except the original $17,000 had been returned to the sender for non-sufficient funds. Obviously, these amounts are now charged to my VISA account and I am responsible to pay the VISA. The last contact I had with the National Sweepstakes Association was a call from a Russell Simmons on August 1 who acted surprised that these checks had been NSF, and said he would get back to me within the hour. Obviously, I never heard from him or anyone else associated with the sweepstakes again!
To regress, on July 1, I received a call from Marshall saying that he had deposited $18,000 in my Chase Bank checking account again, and I would need to withdraw this money again, and he would give me instructions as to where to send it after I had withdrawn it. When we went to the Chase Bank to withdraw the money, we found that our account had been "frozen" by the bank manager because she suspected that this was a scam. The Chase Bank then conducted an investigation, which did not find any thing definite about the National Sweepstakes Association or a scam. However, the bank returned this money to my VISA Account. We then cancelled our Chase Account, and established a new account which I did not give to Marshall.
On about July 9, I received a call from Marshall again telling me that more money had been deposited to my VISA account. I checked and found that there was $20,000 in the account. Marshall then requested that I give him the account number of a savings account we have at Citizens Bank so that he could arrange a transfer of these funds. I foolishly did so. On July 12, he called to tell me that I should send a wire transfer of 17,500 to a bank in Barcelona, Spain which would then loan money to the Sweepstakes to pay additional taxes. He also said that the amount of my winnings had changes to $720,000 because the 2nd place winner could not be located. I have all of the documentation of this wire transfer. On July 19, he called again and instructed me to send a wire transfer in the amount of $18,000 to the same bank in Spain. I also sent copies of the document by FAX to him at FAx 514-336-1797. He called me again to say everything had been received, and that in about a week to 10 days I would be receiving four checks and all of the "paperwork" proving that taxes had been paid, etc., etc..
On July 25, Marshall called again to tell me that "an error" had been made in their office, and my winnings would now be $1,440,000. I finally became very suspicious, and asked again how soon I would receive the prize. He said it would be only a few more days, and that he was going to deposit $2,000 to my VISA for immediate "spending money" on that day or the next day. Of course, this never happened, and when I checked my ViSA balance, I discovered that all of the previous deposits were now CHARGES!
Although, I know I was very foolish to believe this scam, these are very clever, convincing criminals, and I ask that they be procecuted to the full extent if they can be found. They should be stopped immediately from victimizing others.
