Not at all. Our friend has money, even if his lady friend does not. And the scammers may well be delighted that their targets are jumping through hoops. In many confidence scams, the more work that a scammer gets their target to put into getting their “prize,” the more likely it is that the scam will work. Their target will have spent a bunch of time and effort, all while thinking about how they will spend their prize money. As a result, they will be more fully committed and more likely to do the final steps of the scam.
So once the driver’s license is taken care of and the bank account is set up, there will be some sort of fee or prepaid tax or other charge that the scammers will say that the target needs to pay before getting their prize. The target will need to pay the fee with their own money and won’t be able to use the prize winnings, but the scammers will insist that it’s not a big deal, because the target will get their prize money as soon as they have paid. And then there will be some other fee, and another after the second is paid, and so on, until the target runs out of money or realize that they have been scammed. There are many variations on this scam, but almost all of them involve sending money or bank account information to the scammers in order to receive the promised prize money.
(It’s also worth flagging that the scammers frequently claim to be some group that runs sweepstakes, e.g. Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Just because caller or emailer says that they are calling from a sweepstakes group doesn’t mean that they are actually who they claim to be.)
, I knew you’d snifff it out.
