Manitowoc County Sheriff Dan Hartwig
The Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office is reminding people to watch out for lottery scams.
Sheriff Dan Hartwig said one scam the department had been dealing with had happened for over a year.
“It was well over six figures that an individual ended up sending to somebody outside of the state,” he explained. “A lot of time, we have to get the FBI involved if it goes over state lines.
Hartwig says a lot of the scams prey on the elderly, and the most recent lottery scam has scammers contacting people via email or over the phone.
He says a sign it could be a scam is if the scammer asks for personal information and money but not through normal ways.
“Whether it’s sent by gift cards, trans-union, or checks being sent through the mail,” he describes. “We had an individual last month that had their scam stopped last month because family members ended up discovering something was not right, and it was actually shocking the amount of money that was sent that these scammers kept going back to this person to send in very large amounts of denominations.”
The most common rule is that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
Hartwig says this scam is non-stop, so it’s always a good idea to know what you’re clicking on before entering your information.
