Readers Digest Sweepstakes
Complaint 4491 Details

My husband received a letter from Readers Digest telling him that he had won 3.5 million dollars. What got us excited was that enclosed in this letter was a check in the amount of $9489.55. this
was a real check. the letter said once you cash the check to call a
certain number. my husband put the check in the bank and the bank stated that he had access to $5,000 of the check immediately.
when my husband called the phone number listed on the letter he was instructed to get out all of the $5,000. $250 went to an address in california and $4000 went to an address in canada. these monies were sent through western union. well, the $250 went through with no problem but the $4000 did not go through because western union would not release it to canada. when my husband go home and told me this i then became suspicious. i called my son and told him what had happened with the money going to canada. my son told me to stop my husband from sending the money until he could pull up readers digest. in the meantime
the people who we were contacting told us to call western union and tell them to release the money and that we were sending it to a relative. when my husband called western union he was instructed that western union would not forward the money to canada because of suspicion of fraud. the people at the phone number then instructed my husband to send the money overnight
mail from the post office and to put the money inside a magazine
and mail the magazine. once i heard this i definitely knew that this was a scam. fortunately, we were unable to send the money thru
the post office that day becasue it was 15 minutes before closing. in the meantime, once my son came home from work we pulled up readers digest sweepstakes on the internet and learned that we were part of a scam. the following day my husband took the money back to the bank and explained to them that he believed it was a scam. i have contacted u.s. postal general inspector and is
waiting on forms to fill out and send back because they consider this mail fraud. we probably will have to put back the difference
of $530 to make it an even $5,000 again but thank god we caught it before we were out of $5,000. what made this scam seem real was because it was a real check that they have provided and we were able to get cash right away. i'm usually not easily deceived but they really had us going on this one.