LOWER TRURO - An $11-million lottery winner has become so frustrated with Internet scammers trying to cash in on his good will that he regrets having ever claimed the prize.
"I wish to hell I had burned the ticket," said Allen Large, who along with his late wife Violet, won $11.2 million in a 6-49 Atlantic Lottery draw last year.
The couple eventually gave away almost all of their winnings to family and numerous charities, but that was only the beginning of what has become an ongoing nightmare for the elderly Lower Truro resident.
The generosity exhibited by the Larges won them world-wide acclaim, but it also set in motion a number of Internet scams in which people are being contacted by e-mails with bogus offers to share in the fortune.
The Truro Daily News has been receiving numerous emails almost daily from various parts of the world from people asking if the emails they are receiving are legitimate, with one coming this week from as far away as Israel.
As well, several people have called the newsroom this week from different parts of the United States with similar questions.
"Oh, there's two or three on the go," Allen Large said, when contacted about the scams.
"Don't feel bad, I'm getting telephone calls at 3 o'clock in the morning from all over the frigging place," he said.
"It's never stopped since we won the frigging money .... I'm really cheesed off with it. And, these buggers that's calling at three o'clock in the morning and interrupting my good night's sleep ... they should be put out on a rock pile with a teaspoon and made to pound rock. Make gravel out of rock with a teaspoon in their bare feet in three-degree-below zero weather."
Robin Archer, a resident from near Houston, Texas, called the newsroom this week to make inquiries after he received a bogus offer purporting to be from Large.
"I totally didn't expect somebody was going to give me a half million bucks out of the blue," he said, adding, however, that what prompted him to give the email a second look was the fact it had a link to a newspaper story about the Large's generosity.
"It gives you a link to this news story. It's obviously a legitimate news story where this couple is giving away a good portion of their winnings, you know, so it makes it seem more legitimate," Archer said.
"They sound like a really wonderful couple, you know, that was doing some good things and now someone is trying to turn it around and obviously do some bad things with their good intentions," he said.
"It's sad that some people are probably going to fall for it because of the link to that news story."
RCMP Sgt. Al Affleck said he had not heard of this particular Internet scam making its rounds but he said it is typical of similar fraudulent activities that are on the go.
"Your typical Nigerian scam," he said, of the Internet activity. "That scam came out a few years ago. It was a Nigerian scam because ... it was traced back to a computer in Nigeria."
One email suggests the receiver has been selected out of 20 people to receive $500,000, while another sends a personal note, purportedly from the Larges, asking for their banking information so the money can be forwarded to them.
And that type of request should be enough to set off the alarm bells in one's head, not to give the offer a second glance, Affleck suggests.
"It's fraud. It's a scam and as we continue to evolve in the world of technology it is going to get worse," he said.
"So people ... cannot give out information over the phone or over the Internet. That's the only advice that the police can give them."
And while everyone dreams of winning the big lottery that puts them on Easy Street, it is not going to come through an anonymous call or Internet offer, especially from thousands of miles away and from someone you have never heard of, he said.
"Do not give your personal information out. Your credit card numbers, your date of birth, your social insurance number, nothing, because they will use it for identity fraud and then they will go in and they will bilk you for as much as they can get out of your account," Affleck said.
"And if it sounds too good to be true, it is, whether they are trying to give you $500 or $5 million, nobody gives us anything for nothing. They always want something back."
