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BBB Sweepstakes Heartbreak: Protect The Vulnerable

BBB Western Michigan

The Better Business Bureau of Grand Rapids recently helped a Grand Rapids woman caught up in what they’re calling a “sweepstakes heartbreak”.   The BBB is encouraging West Michigan residents to help protect vulnerable adults.  They say some bank accounts are being drained over a sweepstakes scam.

“This was really a unique situation, I had never come across it before.  But it was really heartbreaking, because this lady, didn’t understand until it was too late and she’d been duped out of all this money.”

That’s John Masterson, Director of Marketing at the Better Business Bureau serving West Michigan. He says within the last week a Grand Rapids woman came to them for help after receiving numerous “sweepstakes” type letters requesting money.

“For her to be getting 40 to 50 letters a day she had probably been going on, paying these people for a while, before coming to us and trying to address the situation.”

Masterson doesn’t have an exact figure on how much the woman paid out, but he says it was costly… adding these scams often target or are successful with  the elderly or perhaps someone with dementia.  The Better Business Bureau counsels thousands of consumers every year about various scams. And while some may say they’re easy to spot, Masterson says that’s not always the case.  So they’re putting out an alert.

“So, we’re putting out awareness about scams that say you’ve won a lot of money and require you to pay to release the funds.  Unfortunately, we cannot give you a particular company name, because they always change, they always use different packaging or different letters but, the scams always the same; you’ve won a lot of money, you’ve got to pay to get that money, and then once you pay to get that money, you don’t actually get the sweepstakes reward, you actually get more solicitations for more scams and ploys.”

Masterson says you can always contact the Better Business Bureau if you have any questions or concerns about possible scams.  You can visit them on their website at BBB.org/Western-Michigan.

Jennifer is an award winning broadcast news journalist with more than two decades of professional television news experience including the nation's fifth largest news market. She's worked as both news reporter and news anchor for television and radio in markets from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo all the way to San Francisco, California.