Recently, there have been fraudulent lottery tickets strategically placed in areas of high volume pedestrian traffic, such as the floors of hotel and apartment lobbies.

These tickets appear new and un-scratched. The victim then scratches the ticket and it reveals that they have won a large amount of money, any where from $70,000 - $700,000.00.

In order to redeem the cash prize, they must fill in the back of the ticket with their name, address and telephone number and then fax it to the number provided on the back of the ticket. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS NUMBER.

In the incidents where the victims have responded to this request, they were informed that in order to claim their prize money they had to pay a membership fee, in the amount of $3,700, in the form of a money gram to ONLINEGAMBLING.COM.

After a week or so, the victims have not heard back about their winnings, so once again they call. This time they are instructed that they must pay taxes on the winnings before receiving their money. The fraudster instructs the victim that they must send the money to the same address.

The victims never receive their money. Yet, they are defrauded of thousands of dollars. Over the past few months, there have been numerous incidents like these reported to police.

Police would like to remind people that offers that seem too good to be true usually are.