In two days it will be Saint Patrick’s Day and many people around the world will be celebrating with great gusto.  Among those celebrating will be scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists who will be taking advantage of the holiday to scam unsuspecting victims.

St. Patrick’s Day is known for big parades and events such as concerts, pub crawls and festivals that require tickets.  Scammers sell fake tickets through phony websites or social media posts leaving the ticket purchasers with worthless tickets.

Scammers also use social media campaigns, phone calls and phishing emails posing as charities supporting St. Patrick’s Day causes such as funding parades or helping Irish communities.

Scammers also will be sending emails, text messages or phone calls telling their targeted victims that they have won a St. Patrick related lottery, such as the Irish National Lottery or the Irish Sweepstakes.  The only catch is that you have to pay an administrative fee or taxes to collect your prize.

TIPS

Fortunately, each of these scams are easy to avoid.

Always buy tickets to any event through the official event website or authorized vendors.  You can also check out if a website is legitimate by going to whois.com which will tell you who owns a particular website.  If the website for a particular Saint Patrick’s Day event is owned by someone in Nigeria, you can be pretty confident it is a scam.

Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.  Whenever you are contacted by phone, email, or text message you can’t be sure who is really contacting you.  If you are considering a charitable donation, check out the charity at charitynavigator.org which will tell you if the particular charity is legitimate as well as how much of what they collect actually goes toward the charitable purpose and where to make a donation.

As with all lotteries, it is impossible to win a lottery you never entered and no legitimate lottery requires you to pay an administrative fee to claim your prize. And while income taxes are due on lottery winnings, no legitimate lottery collects income taxes from winners.  It either deducts taxes from the winnings as with Powerball or it pays you the entire prize and you are responsible for paying the taxes on your own to the IRS.

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