Trading Standards Promote Scamnesty Campaign
Coventry Trading Standards Officers have united with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to launch a campaign in the city, warning about lottery and work from home scams. The campaign being launched is called the Scamnesty Campaign.
Mike Lynn from Coventry Trading Standards was quoted as saying that in 2009 over 100 complaints had been received from local residents, with foreign lotteries topping the list as the most complained about.
For instance, one pensioner lost £40,00 to various lottery scams. Another resident lost nearly £30,000, believing they had won a prize on the Spanish Lottery, then realized they had become the victim of a lottery scam.
The scale of the scams and frauds, according to OFT estimates, is more than 3 million adults becoming victims, losing some £3.5 billion per year, but probably less than 5% of incidents are reported.
Cllr. Hazel Noonan, cabinet member for City Services was quoted as saying the scams are easily recognized, as they appear out of the blue, promise something for nothing and ask for money to be paid in advance.
Other typical scams are prize draw notifications, fake psychic predictions, also phishing scams which purport to originate from a bank or building society and requesting personal information.
Scamnesty 2010 is being launched this week; city residents are encouraged to take part by reporting any scams they receive directly to Consumer Direct City. Any e.mails or letters received should be taken to Trading Standards; they may provide essential intelligence information to help stop these scamsters conning innocent people out of their money.
Never forget, if an offer looks too good to be true, then it probably is.
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Click >>> “Lottery Scam or Safe and Legal” to see the kind of safe-guards a legitimate organization will have in place.
If you’d like more information on the Scamnesty Campaign visit www.coventry.gov.uk/tradingstandards or report a scam to Consumer Direct by calling 08454 04 05 06 or writing to Scamnesty – Trading Standards, Freepost (CV681), Coventry CV1 1BR.
Source acknowledged with thanks: Coventry Telegraph 04/02/10
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