Prize Money

My dad called me last night to tell me that my Grandmother had won a contest and that she had received a check in the mail for $4,456.78 which was to cover the taxes on the 100k prize. She was not to take any action until she called an international number listed on the letter.

"I think I'll just deposit it into her account," he said.

There is actually two issues with this;

#1 -This is a scam. The person you call tells you that you deposit the check and send them the money, in return they will send the remainder of the prize, the problem being is that the check is no good and the scammer gets you to pay $4,456.78. You never collect the winnings because there are no winnings.

#2- My Grandmother has been dead since April of 2009.

Apparently the account my dad had with her prior to her death still has her name on it, so feasibly he could place the check into her account. I can only speculate as to how my dad thought he would obtain her signature to endorse the check, and I didn't ask.

Although I didn't know the exact scam at the time, I knew it was too good to be true and I told him to not try to deposit the check.

I told him not to deposit the check not because I thought it was wrong to collect a prize for a dead person, in fact that didn't even occur to me.

Let me begin by saying I have never in my life outwardly stolen anything, meaning if something didn't get rung up at the register I didn't point out the error, which technically is theft, but what I mean is I have never taken anything with the intent of not paying for it.

I think I can say the same thing about my mom, dad and sister. We aren't shop lifters...or grifters-yet I would have no issue with endorsing a check with a dead person's signature- and either did my dad- so what exactly does that make us?

I guess for one it makes us potential forgers.

"Legally I don't think a dead person can collect a prize," I told my father.

"How do you know she didn't win it before she died?", he replied.

Its a decent argument. yet since she has been dead around 19 months, I'm not certain when put to the test it really holds water.

"I guess the prize would then go to her estate," I said, and it was at this point I realized I had been sucked into the insanity. The reality was there was no prize, and if there was this was certainly not the way in which we would be informed.

"I don't think you would have to talk to someone in Indonesia if this was a for real thing," I reasoned.

After a few minutes I got my dad to agree to throw away the check, but it did take a bit of convincing.

Today my sister told me that a payroll service deposited money in her checking account and she has no idea where it came from.

"Don't spend it, they will figure it out sooner or later," I told her.

Or maybe she won a prize....