Ventura County Sheriff's Department

Location: El Rio
Date & Time: August 2008
Recently an old Lotto Scam was discovered in the unincorporated area of Ventura County. This particular case was initiated by a company calling itself “Pacific Healthcare, Inc.”.
Typically, in a scam of this nature, a fraudulent company will send a letter or an email to the potential victim telling the victim they won a lottery. The company will sometimes attach a ‘good faith’ check for the victim to deposit. The fraudulent company will advise the victim to send money back to them to cover such expenses as ‘taxes’ on the winnings. The check sent by the dishonest company is also fraudulent. The scam hopes the victim will send the requested money back to them before the victim is advised the ‘good faith’ check was fraudulent. A majority of these scams originate from outside of the US and investigation and prosecution of them is difficult at a local level.

Don’t fall prey to these types of scams. Contact your local law enforcement agency before taking any action on this type of ‘lottery winnings notification’.