ACTION 9 Investigates Sweepstakes Scam

The Better Business Bureau has a warning about a sweepstakes scam that's getting more popular. Victims get a check in the mail for thousands of dollars that they need to pay taxes on. But it's always a rip off.

Sheena Honeycutt recently opened her mailbox and discovered a letter telling her she'd won a $150,000 sweepstakes.

'I thought wow, I won $150,000. But then it said a sweesptakes I had not entered," she said.

She also got a check for $3975 to pay the taxes on her big pay out. But the letter said the law required the winner to pay the taxes and told her to deposit the check and wire the cash back to the sweepstakes company and it would release her winnings.

Honeycutt also called the number on the letter, a number she traced to a cell phone in Canada. But she wasn't buying any of it.

'I was a little bit smarter than that. I'm leery of the scams going around today,"she said,

But Honeycutt didn't deposit the check. She called the company on the check in Frisco, Texas and asked the owner if the check was good.

"He said,'No mam, that's a scam that's been going on and that it was not real,'' she said.

Also the bank the check was drawn on told her the account was closed. If she had taken the bait, cashed the bad check and wired the money to Canada, she would have had to repay her bank nearly $4,000.

Action 9 called the number in Canada for the people who sent Honeycutt the check and asked what they were up to.

They only said, "If you don't have anything to say get off the phone, ok," and hung up.

Better Business Bureau president Tom Bartholomy said it's impossible to stop the scammers because they're constantly moving their operations in Canada.

"This is the hottest scam going by far, not just in the United States but it has swept the world"