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Charlie Belton thought he had finally “hit one.”

The 69-year-old retired carpenter, who likes to enter sweepstakes, got a letter last month from a Canadian company saying he had won $125,000.

The company even sent him a check drawn on a local bank for $4,850 to cover processing fees and insurance. All Belton had to do was send his own check to cover those costs and the sweepstakes would be his.

He deposited the original check and sent off his own. And he learned a lesson the hard way.

“They hooked me,” Belton said. “It didn’t make me feel none too happy.”

Belton isn’t alone.

The head of the local Better Business Bureau of Central North Carolina said her agency has been inundated with calls from people who have been targeted by the same scam.

“They are just swamping this area with notifications,” Pauline Morrison said . “People fall for it.”

Morrison could not say how many area residents got taken in by the scam or how much money they lost.

“They keep quiet,” Morrison said of the victims. “It’s hard to document.”

In Belton’s case, he’s out more than $5,000.

Belton knows now he should have listened to his daughter, Deborah Bryson of Randleman.

“Daddy, you better watch it,” she told him. “It might be a scam.”

But the check looked legitimate, even to Belton’s bank teller.

It wasn’t.

Morrison said the scammers use the names and bank account numbers of reputable local businesses on the checks. She would not identify any of those firms.

Her agency refers complaints to the Federal Trade Commission , but she admits she’s never heard of victims getting their money back.

“(The scammers) change names and move across the street,” Morrison said. “They are always a step ahead (of the law).”
Morrison said the BBB always tells callers: “If you have to pay any money to receive a prize, you haven’t won any-
thing.”

Belton offers his own advice. “If I get any more of those ... things I am going to put them in the trash,” he said. “The best thing anybody can do is discard it to keep from losing any money.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com