Over the years, I have written many times about scammers posing as Publishers Clearing House to scam people they convince that they have won one of their lotteries, but have to pay administrative fees or income taxes in order to claim their prize. As I have often told you, no legitimate lottery charges administrative fees and income taxes are never collected by a legitimate lottery. Either the lottery deducts the taxes before paying the prize or they pay the full prize with the winner responsible for paying his or her own income taxes due on the lottery winnings.
Today’s Scam of the day is different, however. The real Publisher Clearing House has settled fraud charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging multiple fraud claims. Specifically, Publishers Clearing House misled people into thinking that if they made a purchase it would increase their chances of winning, added surprise shipping and handling fees that increased the cost of their customers’ orders by an outrageous average of 40% and charged customers fees to return products despite representing that the ordering process was “risk free.”
According to the terms of the settlement, 18.5 million dollars will be paid by Publishers Clearing House to the FTC for refunds to eligible customers. At this time the refund program has not yet started and the terms of who is eligible or a refund has not been determined. As details become available I will inform you here at Scamicide.
TIPS
In regard to this and any other FTC refund to scam victims, there is never a fee involved to the scam victim. Scammers will often take notice of refunds being provided to scam victims by the FTC and contact the scam victims by email, phone or text message posing as an FTC representative asking for a fee in order to process the refund. This is always just another scam. Even if you get a phone call and your Caller ID indicates the call is from the FTC, scammers are able to use a technique called “spoofing” to manipulate your Caller ID to make it appear as if the call is coming from the FTC when it is actually coming from the scammer. The FTC is not contacting anyone at this time in regard to the refund program.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”