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November 28, 2012

Woman describes scam

Kevin Hall The Moultrie Observer

MOULTRIE — If the man on the phone was telling the truth, Merry Brazel has won $650,000.

But she’s pretty sure he wasn’t, and she’s pretty sure she didn’t.

“It’s all bogus, but somebody’s going to fall for it,” Brazel told The Observer Wednesday.

Her first clue was that she hadn’t entered any contest, except for a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes a while back. The man on the phone didn’t say he was from Publishers Clearing House.

Then there’s the process for claiming the prize money. Brazel said the man told her to buy a $250 Moneygram from a specific local store then call him back. The Moneygram was to be made out to a named individual in Panama City, Panama. He said someone would come to collect the Moneygram within three hours after she called him back. Her prize would then be sent to her by Federal Express.

He warned her to tell anyone who asked that it was for a relative to keep her from being overwhelmed with publicity.

“[They’ll] be talking to you like you were their best friend and you really had won this money,” she said.

All of those elements — winning a contest one didn’t enter, having to send money to claim a bigger prize, and encouraging secrecy — are common to telephone scams, but what struck Brazel the most was the man’s persistence. She said he’s been calling her for four months.

The phone number appeared on Brazel’s caller ID as being from Seattle, Wash. Since she doesn’t know anyone in Seattle, she didn’t answer it. On Wednesday she did, just in hopes of stoppng the calls. That’s when the man on the phone told her of the “blessing” she had received.

“I told him it was a scam,” she said, “He said, ‘No, no.’”

Brazel kept the man on the phone, writing down notes about what he said. She got a name, got a phone number. And when she got off the phone, she called the FBI.

Only the FBI doesn’t really work those kinds of cases. A spokesman at the FBI’s Atlanta office gave Brazel phone numbers for the governor’s office and for the Federal Trade Commission. She called the FTC, where she said she spoke with a man who really tried to help her. He took her information and said he’d pass it on to law enforcement agencies across the country.

But Brazel contacted The Observer because she wanted to go a step farther and warn the local community.

Because Tuesday night her mother-in-law got a phone call. It was from Seattle, Wash. She doesn’t know anyone in Seattle, so she didn’t answer it …

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