Lottery scam perpetuated by local involvement

After receiving scam complaints nearly every day, an Alcorn County Investigator recently noted that scams will not stop unless people stop responding to scammers.
A recent statement from Alcorn County Investigator Jerry Rogers reported that the Alcorn County Sheriff's Office receives calls nearly every day from people who have had dealings with scammers. One of the more prevalent scams right now is the lottery scam, he said.
Around the end of last month, an official news release from Commissioner Brandon Presley, of the Mississippi Public Service Commission, explained that the lottery scam begins with a phone call to convince individuals they have won a large amount of money. Soon, the excited citizen learns the detail that could lead to their ruin - that they need to send a certain dollar amount for "insurance and processing fees" in order to collect the winnings.
Rogers stressed that nothing is free and people need to be aware of what is going on.
"Definitely do not cash any checks you get in the mail. Do some investigation ... take the check to your local bank and see if it's legitimate," said Rogers. "These people appear to be really going more for senior citizens who are have only Social Security or retirement that they are living on."
Presley's report confirmed this fact. He said that people are getting into personal conversations with the scammers, who appear very friendly, and he heavily stressed that citizens should not send these companies any money or give them any personal information.
Most of the funds that are sent out because of these scams go out of the country - much has been traced to Jamaica, where the money backs Jamaican gangs, Rogers noted. This was confirmed by Presley's report as well as by an Associated Press story by Mike Melia, which stated that Americans sent more than $30 million last year to claim winnings in a Jamaican lottery.
"The trouble is," Melia wrote, "there is no such contest."
Many citizens who fall for the scams, lose thousands of dollars, savings and more, and then fall victim to even more because they think they can make the money back. An example of this is the fact that one local woman, whom Rogers did not name, had lost all she had to scammers. So much money, that when scammers contacted her again, she informed them she had no more money and they began to send her packages of cash to send to other addresses throughout the country.
"Most of the addresses she sent the money to were bogus," said Rogers. "Yet, someone still managed to get the money." Rogers went on to say that FedEx has an investigator looking into who is intercepting the money as it appears to never reach the false address.
Locally, the lottery scam is not the only scam used to try to trick people out of their money. Last winter, The Daily Corinthian reported two separate cases of people who were using classified ad to sell puppies and they were contacted by scammers. In both cases - one being a Rienzi man and the other being a woman who is a Hurricane Creek area resident - both people were able to catch on to the scam before they lost any money and both reported the incidents to the authorities.
Rogers said that, in the end, raising awareness could very well be the only answer to beating the scammers. He urged people to spread the word about the problem in an effort to thwart any more people being taken in.
"This is huge and most of it is outside our jurisdiction," said Rogers. "The only way to stop it is for people to quit falling for it."