A friend of mine received a letter and a check supposedly from Mark and Anthony Inc from onlinegambling.com, the check being in the amount of $1995.00. The letter instructed her to call 1-289-888-2179 for instructions on how to obtain the remainder of her accumulated winnings which were roughly $250,000. When she called the number, a man answered and instructed her to Western Union $1750.00 to a Lind Lie up in Toronto, Canada and to then call him back and provide him with the confirmation number to have her winnings released.
She took the check to her bank, it was help for three days and today she was informed that the funds were available. She was all set to wire this money when she thought to call me and it's a damn good thing she did! It was nothing more than a SCAM folks and I have no doubt that many other people have been duped by this as well.
No, she hasn't ever gambled on line before which would have been bells and whistles going off for me but she's a bit more naive than most. Her BANK failed to spot the cleverly forged check as well and put it through for processing, which the standard hold time is 3-5 business days and 3 days had passed without the check bouncing so they cleared the funds. Here's the scam. You wire the money, the check BOUNCES and you are left holding the nothing but a big fat BILL from your bank.
The person the letter was supposedly signed by is Patrick Odusey and the check was supposedly written off of a Citibank account. Please, please PLEASE spread the word about this horrible scam as I only found two sites with any information when I did a Google search. Christmas is coming and this could have financially destroyed my friend and Christmas for her two young daughters. This is FRAUD and we all need to work together to get this stopped.
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