On Monday afternoon, Darlene Charters of Brownfield received a phone call from someone claiming to be from the Publishers Clearing House, saying that she had won the prize of a lifetime.
“They said I won $3.5 million and that I’d get ten thousand dollars a month for the rest of my life,” said Charters.
Charters said the longer she stayed on the phone with the person who had called, the more she felt convinced she actually won. Her mind began to race with what she would spend it on, beginning with her loved ones.
“I could help my kids, I could help my grandkids!”
But there was a bit of a catch: they wanted her to pay up a registration fee of $25,000. The callers were also out of the country, Charters said that she could barely understand them. That’s when she realized it was a scam.
“When you start hearing them talk and you cannot understand them it makes you wonder what’s going on? And I had never heard of Publishers Clearing House calling and saying those things before.”
Charters says that although she wanted to believe the scam was true, she’s glad she made the decision to hang up and hopes others learn to do the same once they begin to feel an offer may be too good to be true or when they begin to feel pressured by the caller.
“That’s what gets you caught, is, you start thinking ‘oh man what could I do with that?’ But you have to think ‘oh man what am I gonna do without the money they’re fixing to cheat me out of?'”
While the Publishers Clearing House is an actual sweepstakes company, you’re far more likely to get calls from scammers than you would from the actual company.
The company’s site offers up some key red flags to keep in mind should you ever find yourself questioning if you’re being scammed. You can look them up right here.
