Baxter County, AR. – An old scam has reared its head in the Ozarks again. The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office has issued a press release of information about this scam. For more, read below:
A Baxter County man was contacted by phone by a persons purporting to be employees and representatives from Publisher’s Clearinghouse telling the man that he had won a large cash award. However, the callers insisted that the man winning the cash prize first had to purchase $2,500 in gift cards for payment as a processing fee before the large cash prize could be paid out to him. The man bought the gift cards as instructed and followed the directions given by the callers. The man later sent cash as well to an address provided by the callers.
The victim finally contacted Publisher’s Clearinghouse himself directly to inquire about his prize, but was told that he was not a winner and there was no cash award for him. The scam callers had used names of people who actually do work at Publisher’s Clearinghouse and were pretending to be them.
If a person is truly the winner of a legitimate drawing, prize, or award from a legitimate and reputable organization there will be no requirement to send cash or gift cards to pay for any kind of fees, and those organizations will not call you asking for the payment of fees. Any calls of this nature should be immediately flagged as suspicious in nature…
