The Sheriff's Office wants to issue a warning to the public that the Publisher's Clearinghouse Scam is again active in this area.  

     A Baxter County man was contacted by phone by a persons purporting to be employees and representatives from Publisher's Clearinghouse telling the man that he had won a large cash award.  However, the callers insisted that the man winning the cash prize first had to purchase $2,500 in gift cards for payment as a processing fee before the large cash prize could be paid out to him.  The man bought the gift cards as instructed and followed the directions given by the callers.  The man later sent cash as well to an address provided by the callers.

     The victim finally contacted Publisher's Clearinghouse himself directly to inquire about his prize, but was told that he was not a winner and there was no cash award for him. The scam callers had used names of people who actually do work at Publisher's Clearinghouse and were pretending to be them. 

     If a person is truly the winner of a legitimate drawing, prize, or award from a legitimate and reputable organization there will be no requirement to send cash or gift cards to pay for any kind of fees, and those organizations will not call you asking for the payment of fees.  Any calls of this nature should be immediately flagged as suspicious in nature and potentially fraudulent. 

     The Sheriff's Office recommends that you do not provide or verify any of your personal information to potential scam callers, including your name, the names of anyone else residing in the home, home address, date of birth, social security number, email address, credit card numbers, bank account information, driver license number, or any other similar types of information.  Do NOT purchase or agree to purchase any gift cards or money cards, and do NOT send any money cards or cash in the mail for so-called processing fees.

     These scammers pray on vulnerable members of the population who may not understand exactly what it taking place when these kinds of calls are received.  If you send money cards or cash, it is unlikely that you will ever be able to recover your financial loss.

      Anyone who has suffered an actual financial loss from scams of this type may report them to their respective law enforcement agencies.

Baxter County Sheriff's Office