(Published Saturday, June 23, 2007 01:01:22 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Brian Reisinger/Gazette Staff
JANESVILLE-At first, Carroll Herritz thought winning $2.5 million sounded too good to be true.
Then it started to sound downright shady.
Herritz received a phone call last week notifying her she'd won a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. The catch: She had to send $899 to claim the prize.
"I said, 'When they come and deliver my check, I'll have the money for them,'" Herritz, 81, told the caller.
Herritz's distrust was founded, said David Tatar, regional manager of Wisconsin's Consumer Protection Bureau. Roughly 15 percent of the 14,000 written complaints the bureau received in 2006 were about scam phone calls, he said.
Rock County had 316 written complaints.
Herritz's account of what happened, he said, bears signs of a scam.
The call came just before noon June 12 telling Herritz she had won. All she needed to do was call a "toll free" number in Jamaica and ask for a Carl Miller. The caller wouldn't give her name.
Herritz called the number and spoke with Carl Miller, who told her she needed to wire money immediately by Western Union to Mary Lee at an address in Hanover, Jamaica.
Herritz said she figured it was a scam, but decided to dig for more and have a little fun.
"I said I had $8.50 in my checking account," Herritz said. "He said, 'Is that all?'"
Miller told her there were four other winners in Janesville, so Herritz checked with Western Union locations in Janesville for other winners wiring money.
None had, so she called Janesville police-notifying the department, but not filing a complaint.
Then Carl Miller called again.
"You're a liar!" Herritz said she told Miller before hanging up.
Miller's instructions that she send money to claim a prize is the biggest warning sign, Tatar said. State law prohibits organizations from requesting money to deliver prizes.
Publishers Clearing House apparently has taken steps to show it doesn't ask for money. A spokesperson could not be reached, but the organization's Web site features a press release that warned of such scams back in 2004. Its automated hot line declares "the winning is always free."
The request that Herritz wire the money is another sign of deception, Tatar said.
"They're trying to avoid any intervention by a postal inspection service," Tatar said.
The elderly are a common target among scam artists, he said.
Tatar cautioned against random phone calls, which can often appear legitimate on caller ID, courtesy of a scrambling technology. Calls by The Janesville Gazette to the number Herritz called resulted in various error messages.
Tatar suggested people sign up for the state's no-call list.
The probable scam, Herritz said, provided some entertainment at the very least.
