Truck driver targeted in lottery scam

Sunday, December 03, 2006 posted 05:03 AM EST

Retirement slipped out of 73-year-old truck driver Lee Price's grasp when he found out his big rig needed thousands of dollars in repairs. Then salvation came in a plain white envelope from Canada.

Or so he thought.

A long-haul truck driver, Price and his wife got home to Greenville Thursday night after several weeks on the road. She ran to the drug store and Price sat down to read the stack of mail that had accumulated.

He opened one of the envelopes on top and out fell a check for $3,500. He couldn't believe it. He held the check up to the light and saw a watermark.

"CONGRATULATIONS!" read the accompanying letter that told Price he had won $250,000 in the USA Mega Millions lottery. The enclosed check was a portion of those winnings to be used to pay the "insurance, taxes, handling and shipping fees" on the remainder of the prize, the letter said.

It was perfect.

"It's going to cost a minimum of $3,000 to repair the truck. We were going to have to tighten our budget to make the repairs, and here we get a $3,500 check," Price said.

He called the number listed in the letter to claim his prize but got a voice mail recording. Then he called the Oregon company listed on the check and asked for Ron Hartman, the name signed to the check.

He got Kathy Goslin instead. Goslin manages Creative Lighting, the company whose account the check was drawn on.

She broke the news. It was a scam.

"It makes me so sad, because I've been hearing some of the saddest stories from the people who are getting these letters and these checks. These are not people who can afford to lose this money," she said.

It was a disappointing blow for Price.

"For just a little while, I thought I was rich," he said. "No more driving."

Turning to his wife sitting in their living room Friday afternoon he added, "We could get that motor home we've always wanted."

Instead, it'll be sometime next year, after he's paid off the truck repairs, that the two will finally settle down in retirement. The motor home will have to wait.

"You don't just play with old people's emotions like that," he said.

On the plus side, his disappointment is free. Had he fallen for the scam, it could have been much most costly, said Greenville Police Detective T.E. Ne'velle, a financial crimes investigator.

There are several ways this scam could have gone, Ne'velle said.

Had Price reached a person when he called the so-called lottery telephone number, they may have asked for his personal banking information to "deposit" the rest of the winnings. Or they could have asked Price to send a check drawn from his own account to receive the rest of the winnings, Ne'velle said.

People have deposited these lottery checks into their accounts and either gotten cash or wrote a check based on the money they think they have.

However, the lottery check turns out to be fraudulent. If the individual's personal check has already cleared the bank, the individual has to repay the money, not unlike when a check bounces because of insufficient funds.

Goslin said she closed the account the check was drawn on more than a month ago when the bank first started getting suspicious calls about the account. She later discovered one of the company's checks had been stolen out of the mail in Canada. That's where the scammers got the account number to put on the checks, she believes.

Even with a realistic check, people need to take precautions and look for red flags if they end up in a similar situation, Ne'velle said.

"If you haven't entered a sweepstakes, that should be your first hint right there," he said.

Rather than taking the information at face value, ask detailed questions on what is necessary to get the money, he said.

"If you have to pay money to get money ignore you've already won, that should be a cue as well," he said.

Price doesn't know what would have happened if he had tried to claim the money. Despite the disappointment, he's staying optimistic. He plans to play his supposed "winning" lottery numbers in the North Carolina lottery next week in hopes they'll really pay off for him this time.

"Miracles do happen," he said.

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