Bank Of Santander, Global Fortune Seguros S.A., Martin Ramos, William Brandon, Ernesto Delvalle Sweepstakes scam Ripoff Madrid Spain

My husband received a letter from the Euro Sweepstakes Lottery Company S.A. of Madrid, Spain. The letter went on to say that he won $610,810.00 in USD and he was to contact a William Brandon, the foreign operations manager of Global Fortune Security, regarding his claims.

These scam artists go through great lengths to make their correspondence look as authentic as possible. For example:

1. It had a hand-placed postage stamp on the envelope from Madrid, Spain for .78 Euros.

2. The letter itself was printed on high quality paper on company letterhead in color, complete with water marks, and a company logo.

3. It had been hand signed by the managing director and it had an official looking seal at the bottom of the letter that resembled a notary seal.

4. The letter claimed that we only had to remit 10% of the winnings to our claims agent AFTER we receive the winnings.

Some warning signs: answering cell phones all hours of the day and night (in English) - there is a 6 hour time difference between here and Spain. We speak Spanish and tried to with them, but they kept resorting to broken English - one guy sounded Arabic and the other African. Of course, there's always the fact that my husband never entered this lottery. When asked to provide proof such as a website, bank identification,etc. they talked around us and assured us (by their word)that this was "real and that you should fully embrace this opportunity."

My husband contacted Mr. Brandon and he informed us to send the form back so they could wire the funds to our account. (We had opened a dummy bank account with $20 just in case). My husband called the next day to find out if Mr. Brandon received the form - he said yes and that we should receive the wire by the end of the week. One week went by and my husband called back Mr. Brandon said that the bank manager should have contacted us to verify the information.

An hour later, lo and behold, the bank manager, Martin Ramos, calls my husband and informs him that he needs to send $950 via a money gram to a Fernando Sanchez in Madrid, Spain. Mr. Ramos said it was for the bank wiring fee. My husband told him to take it out of the winnings then, and was informed that they weren't allowed to touch the money. Upon receipt of the fee zthey would wire the money to our account and send a confirmation letter of the transaction within 48 hours. Why send it to this Fernando Sanchez? Mr. Ramos told us that Mr. Sanchez was his secretary and that Mr. Ramos could not leave his office to run trivial errands.

We decided to wire the money. While my husband was at work, I decided to do some further investigating on the internet. I had tried to find out information earlier but not much came up and we were concerned about the claims deadline. I concluded that these companies do not exist and found this website. I told my husband what I had found out and he told me that if it were a scam the money would be long gone by now and there was nothing we could do about it. All we could do was place everything in the Lord's hands and pray for a miracle (I also repented for allowing greed to cloud my better judgement). All that night I couldn't sleep and I had a strong gut feeling to get up and call Western Union to check on the status. So I got up and did just that. Miraculously, the funds had not been picked up yet and they had been over there for over 24 hours! I called customer service and had them stop the payment. Mr. Ramos called (a half hour later! I had acted just in time!) to find out if we sent the funds because there was a problem when they went to pick it up. I told him to talk to my husband.

William Brandon called the next day saying how he had everything set up and they were just waiting for the funds. My husband told him that he needed some kind of proof, a website address, a badge, bank identification, etc. Mr. Brandon got angry and said that he didn't care if we claimed the money or not, if we didn't want to pay money to receive our money then to forget about it.

They keep changing company names and claims agent names so it is hard to search the internet and not have any information come up under the new name, as was the case when I originally searched prior to sending the money.

I didn't want to admit that we initially fell for this scam, after all I feel so ashamed and embarrassed. The only reason I am coming forward to tell our version of this story is because I truly believe God worked a miracle for us and I felt led to share it with the person out there that needs to hear that.

Karolyn
Oxford, Michigan
U.S.A.