I never thought this could happen tome, but it goes to show you that no one is immune to these types of creative and plausible scams...
On 10/23, I was contacted on my cell phone by Richard Fox, security code CH3026, from the US Government Grants & Treasury Dept (202) 239-1026. He called to inform me that I was approved to receive a $7800.00 grant, which I applied for a few months back. I didn't question it because I have been applying to different agencies, trying to get some financial relief.
In any case, Richard Fox preceded to tell me that I was selected out of 12000 Americans to receive this grant. He then gave me the address to his location, which is supposedly in Washington DC. I was kind of puizzled by the noisy connection we had, plus the heavy Indian accent, However, I was desperate so decided to precede with it. Once I agreed upon receiving my grant, he placed me on hold and said that Christopher Adams, the Accounts Manager in the Grants Department, will tell me how to claim my $7800 grant. He placed me on hold and transferred me to Christopher. Christopher explained that in order for me to claim my grant, I would have to through some verification, and for that process they use Western Union, since they don't ask for customer's personal information, such as Bank accounts, social security numbers, & etc. He told me that I had to go to a Western Union, and "deposit" $100.00 into a fictitious account, in the name of Sundar Lal, in Delhi, India. The ironic thing was that Christopher Adams, also had an Indian accent, and he also sounded like he was on some cell phone or satellite phone, but being that I was desperate and STUPID, I wired the $100.00 while he kept me on the phone.
Once I gave him the MTCN number, he placed me on hold for about 5-10 minutes, then when he came back on, he apologized & said that the computers had gone down so they couldn't complete the transaction. Since I was still standing at the counter, I quickly told the cashier to cancel the transaction, but believe it or not, these crooks had already had taken the money. When I called back & tried to speak to Christopher, I got a Thomas, Mike, Gilbert, who all had an Indian accent. & then the next day, Paul called me from (202) 470-0955, to let me know that I cannot get my money back, however, if I want the grant, I need to send an additional $245.00, for the application fee. Yeah Right!!!
From my hard-earned $100.00, they made $4,573.35 Indian Rupee.
I was so mad, that I started to cry. I couldn't believe that these people would have the balls to use a government name to carry out their illegal scams!
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