OT: Lottery winnings

"Amber" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

As regards 'phone calls, I believe you have the wrong approach entirely. I receive no unwanted calls at all now having followed a policy of always hanging up without saying anything the minute they were identified. I clearly was not handed on to other companies as a 'potential' and over time, as I say, receive not one call. I also did it for charities that called because for every dollar these telemarkers get out of you for charitable causes, usually only about

Anyone who would sign up for a lottery in another country has to be mad - every country now has lotteries readily available.

I would be very cautious about extending the phone time. There have been some scams here where the point was to keep people on the line to find out more information about how to collect their winning/cruise/timeshare whatever, using offshore 1-900 phone numbers. Those who were caught got very large phone bills for longdistance calls to numbers in Africa or other far-off locales. Dawne

You both make good points. I guess the article was about one certain scam-artist.

Well there's no such thing as East-West Australia Lotteries anyway. Strange that these scams continue, as it's hard to imagine there could be anyone left who might be tempted to give their card details over the phone. Sad to say, there are still people losing large amounts of money.

John

snipped-for-privacy@mail.terrace.qld.edu.au,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

I think they find enough people. I have an aunt, now in her 90s and out of it with Alzheimers, but shortly before she had to give up living on her own she spoke to a nice man on the 'phone from Canada (she's in Sydney, Australia) and wound up sending him around A$5000. So if you extend that by many elderly people with similar circumstances, all those calls could be lucrative.

When she called me asking me to contact the man in Toronto and get him to return the money, I contacted the RCMP who were already on to him and of course, sadly, I betrayed her wishes and told my cousin in Sydney what was happening.

They prey on people, quite shamelessly.

I know my father received a phone scam call the day of my older brothers funeral. My father seemed confused and so I asked him who he was talking to. My father told me he had won some money etc. needless to say the scammer did not want to talk to me. These people read obituaries which usually mentions the deceased age and surviving relatives. Easy way to target elderly parents. Ruby All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no Attention to criticism.

For a while there, there was a bunch of burglars who were reading the obits. If "funeral is at 10 AM Friday", then they were in the house at

I'm sure that is still occurring somewhere or another. My father didn't place my mother's obituary in the newspaper until after the funeral for that reason, and that was back in 1986.

-- Carey in MA

That's sad. There could have been people who would have attended if the notice had been published in time. One can always ask the local police to keep an eye on the house during a funeral. They usually have no problem helping in this way since they know these homes are targeted by criminals. In some places you can hire an off-duty officer to housesit for the time you are at services.

He was going to place an announcement, but the town paper said they wouldn't print it if it didn't contain all the information one usually sees, like survivors of XX town, etc., and he thought that was too much information to put in the paper. The fact that there even *was* a funeral or wake was enough, as my mother always said she didn't want one, and he was really doing to not have one. He finally did come to see that perhaps her sister and her husband and daughter, and her brother and his wife and children, might like to know and come to pay respects, so a short session at the funeral chapel, small graveside speech by a local minister. Basically, it was "invitation only." Unfortunately, when my father passed away, someone at the funeral home thought he wanted the same thing and had turned a couple of cars away, saying it was a private service. Due to the confusion, those who had been sent home couldn't be contacted to tell them to come back. (At that time, I believe my brother did ask the neighbors across the street who were home with small children, as well as the local police, to keep an eye on the house.) It would be so nice if people didn't have to worry about things like that during difficult times.

-- Carey in MA

Some of our local paranoids are simply printing "call family for details of service". Not sure if they're trying to prevent complete strangers from showing up for the free food, or keep the info out of the hands of burglars, but I know there are times my parents have reconnected with old friends they'd lost track of by attending family funerals. The phone number was unlisted (listed in some other county/state and they didn't know which one), so they couldn't just call to find out when and where.

My Mom's funeral was a few weeks ago and a friend, retired Hi-Way Patrol, stayed at the house while we were attending to business, visitation and the funeral. So nice of him to offer to do this for us. Barbara in SC