DjESIGNS | Polstar Lottery Group is a fraud

2.22.06

Polstar Lottery Group is a fraud

My sister-in-law received an "official-looking" letter in the mail tonight congradulating her for being the "Category 'C' winner of the Polstar Lottery Group's annual Unclaimed Funds Random Drawing"...sheesh, try saying that 5 times fast!

Yada, yada, yada...huge amount of money, click here, sign there, call soon. All reeks of a scam. But how can we be sure? Let's start with the basics.

1) Their website www.polstarlg.com
It's pathetic (even if the template was provided by Network Solutions) and devoid of information for a company claiming to hold the key to riches.

Also, since there is no number on the website to call, you have to use their contact form. The contact form that sends your info to http://wsm.ezsitedesigner.com/servlet/VisitorFeedback. Yeah, nice touch.

2) Domain registration information.
The domain was registered and expires:
Updated Date: 23-jan-2006
Creation Date: 23-jan-2006
Expiration Date: 23-jan-2007

Funny how this "annual" event never happened last year and looks to end in 2007. Oh, and the Whois lookup also reveals that a Christopher Smith that registered the domain lives in the good ole' US of A. Why is that relevant? Oh, because Polstar claims to be a Canadian company (1000 tesma way vaughan, ontario canada). One more thing, Whois searches and Google Maps are a wonderful combo. I spy with my little eye ;-)

3) You NEVER, EVER, EVER pay taxes on winnings in order to claim your price. Yup, that's the clincher. That's how all these scams work. The money you pay is the only money involved in these transactions. That's how they get rich.

This scam had all the tell-tale signs, like the "Confidential Disclosure Agreement". Its only purpose is to keep the potential victim from talking to anyone who can point out the fraud.

UPDATE - Looks like Polstar's web host has disabled their account. Don't know if this post helped lead to it, but fortunately no one else will be scammed through that means.

12:05 am in i hate spam | 1 person viewing

5 ramblings so far

1. I remember about a year ago or so someone called for my 90+ year old granny. My mom intercepted the call, but the guy stated she won some australian lottery, but she had to come to Canada to pick up the check (dollar amount something like $100k). But of course they wanted her to send something in the neighborhood of $3k for "taxes, processing and shipping". They gave my mom a number to call back. I googled the number up and it turned out to be someone's cell phone out of some other state. Granny was excited, and was actually pretty upset with US when we burst her bubble. She always gets these "sweepstakes" lotteries in the mail, and she thought she hit the big one.

I hate scammers with a passion,

on 2.23.06@9:06 am by pcdebb

2. My sis was initially excited as well. I told her I hoped it was real, but to treat it as skeptical until the "excitement" was over and it could be looked at with a clear head. Fortunately that worked and a couple of hours later we were able to dig up the info above.

It's a horrible shame that there are people out there that have no since of purpose except defauding others. Guess it's a good thing they are also pretty dumb and leave a trail of breadcrumbs directly to their house...with satellite images of it.

on 2.23.06@9:51 am by Danne

3. I was scammed by this polstar lottery. I am doing everything I can to make sure it happens to nobody else

on 3.3.06@3:56 pm by Melanie

4. did anyone else get a check with the polstar lottery letter? that was drawn off a ca company?

on 3.7.06@2:14 pm by melanie

5. I got a check with the polstar. Turned it all over to the US postal service fraud devision.

on 7.1.06@9:03 pm by Dave

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