On Saturday I received a phone call claiming to be from Publishing Clearing House informing me I won a prize $975,000 and a new Mercedes Benz car. The call was from Kingston, Jamaica number 1-876-841-2377 and was told to call number 1-876-479-2690 to talk with a Jeffery Maxwell extension 5. I called the number and someone using a voice changer( sounded like a male impersonating a female voice) answered and directed my call to Mr. Maxwell whose voice was identical to the first caller! He told me today was the most lucky day in my life that I had won the grand prize $975,000 and a new car and be sure to put on a fancy suit and be ready to take the prize which was due to arrive in the next three hours. All I had to do was go to CVS and purchase a green dot card in amount $899.00 and then call him back. I asked why should I have to send money to receive even more? He said 99.5% of the taxes were paid all I had to do was pay for a Federal stamp tax which does not even exist for $899.00. I told him it is illegal to send payment for a prize and he got mad and argued with me that I was wrong and was not really sending anyone payment! That was the end of it. I did not send any payment but probably still will have a high phone bill for making the second call which is billed at international rates.

Be on the lookout for this scam artist. If any anonymous person from area code 876 calls you or claims to be from Publishing Clearing House, it probably is a scam. Publishing Clearing House does not call or communicate with the winner in any form before receiving the prize. It is very shameful of these people to commit such crimes and they prey mostly on elderly people, the most vulnerable. I hope someday these scam artists are put in jail where they belong!

lol

Long ago I read about a guy that strung the scammers along for maybe weeks. He had a great time lying to them as much as they lied to him. It's a very long post on the internet somewhere. He did things like said he rode to the post office on his bicycle for two hours to buy the money order but it was closed, and it rained all the way home. Then he said his wife was sick and he couldn't leave to get the money order. When the scammer got mad the 'victim' asked for money from them so he would know he could trust them. It was really funny. He strung them along for days. I wish there was a way to prosecute them. Tom

I called the real Publishing Clearing House and told them about my scam experience and they will report this to the authorities. I hope they can find and prosecute the scam artists.