Yesterday I received a check for near $3,000.00 from Rainbow Financial Trust: A subsidiary of Rainbow Light; which I have never heard of. Nor did I know why I was receiving this. I had a gut feeling it was a scam, I mean I had to read the letter a few times before I could even make some sense of it. I know people who have one large cash prizes and never had to deal with any percentage surcharge to be paid as commission in order to receive their prize money.
The letter states, "Our firm has secured for, the percentage surcharge to be paid as commission on your winning prize to the Lotto Regulatory Board, saving you the trouble." Yet there was no check stub attached to the check. If it weren't for not seeing a check stub that should have still been attached to the check, I would probably be working myself into a deep, deep hole of debt or something. Use common sense, and use the resources (especially the Better Business Bureau, which are located in plenty cities/states, and can be found by zipcode searching at: www.betterbusinessbureau.org [www.BBB.org]) available to you before you get into anything that looks suspiscious like this.
If it was saving me the trouble that was the case, I would have never seen a piddly little check (with no check stub). If anything The company/foundation / or whatever the place is would take care of that stuff just to save someone the hassle.
The letter also says to, "Keep your winning confidential until your prize money is received to avoid multiple claims." Yea, anybody that's really winning good money is not going to keep it quiet.
The letter and check sounded phony, so I figured I'd check it out with the Better Business Bureau. Sure enough, nothing with any of the names in the letter or on the check came up at all. The letter spoke of a ticket number and a serial number, then at the bottom left their was a reference bar code of some sort.
I'm so glad my parents taught me to check into things that seemed suspiscious; otherwise I probably would have tried to cash the check right away. You could tell this was a scam because of all the different places named in the letter and on the check, and then there were ticket numbers, serial numbers, phone numbers from a computer ballot.
And for what reason would I need that barcode in the letter for if they were trying save me the trouble, it looked more like they were trying to make it seem real but really made it obvious that it wasn't. Ok, I get my mail and their was no return address.
Come on now, that tell's you that something definitely isn't right. If it isn't that, then it has to be the "From anywhere to anyone" inkstamp from when they sent the letter.
Stephanie
Racine, Wisconsin
U.S.A.
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