Here’s another reason to have a sit-down with your elderly relatives and make them promise that if they ever, ever find out they’ve won some money in a lottery they didn’t enter, they should tell family members immediately.

This octogenarian sent $60,000 to scammers in the Dominican Republic while they strung him along with promises of riches.

The promise of foreign lottery winnings, sweepstakes and other riches that arrived by mail proved too tempting for John as they promised him hundreds of thousands – and sometimes millions – of dollars he was sure he was going to receive.

They came with convincing company or corporation titles, such as the Diabetes Association. Upon further investigation by family members, something always proved to be amiss.

But John wouldn’t heed their warnings that he was being taken.

And there always was that catch, that small amount of money he would need to send to secure his winnings.

At one point, the scammers managed to get John to check himself out of a hospital in order to show up for a fake meeting at a Walmart parking lot. Another time, they sent him to a Bank of America branch to inquire about an account in his name; no account had been set up.

We suggest you bookmark the article for future reference. Better yet, print it out or copy & paste it, and then give it to your relatives (of all ages) with the warning that nobody EVER wins money from foreign lotteries. EVER. That may or may not be true, but we’d rather they err on the side of financial self-sufficiency than be left homeless and penniless from chasing a phantom lottery that seems to grow in value the more desperate they get.

Check out the tips and references on this post for more info on how to protect your loved ones from foreign lottery scams. You can also show them this video clip:

“Scammers leave 82-year-old Sun Citian homeless, penniless” [YourWestValley.com] (Thanks to Tiffany!)

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