Scam Observation: Well Thought Out Phone Scam?

Phone scams, email scams, I'm sure most people are aware of these. I have always identified these scams before any information of value can be extracted.

There was 1 scam however that I'd like to share, from my University days. While walking to a lecture I received a phone call by a girl who claimed she was from Mercedes "Hi there, my name is Kelly and I'm calling from the new Mercedes dealership, I would like to invite you to our grand opening event this Saturday, I hope you can make it", I thought it was a bit strange, but I politely rejected and let her know that I was not interested.

She then proceeded to reply "Oh, really? There are going to be a lot of giveaways, anyways I'll give you your raffle number which will be drawn on the day. In case you do decide to attend, your raffle number is 8874659, and the event will be broad casted live on channel ONE". At that point I thought this was a telemarketing call and quickly ended the call.

She was right, that coming Saturday I saw the event broad cast live on TV, it was grand, a lot of people in suits, alot of champagnes and a ribbon cutting ceremony. I realized that the event was what that girl was talking about, but didn't think much of it. A few days passed and I got call from the same girl, "Hi, this is Kelly from Mercedes, just wondering if you had been able to attend our opening event last Saturday?" "Oh, you weren't able to attend? That’s a shame because your number came up in the raffle and you've won a brand new Mercedes!”.

No way this was going to be true right? I was suspicious, but I wanted to see where this was going, as up to that point there was no attempt to obtain my personal information... yet, "Oh really? I am usually not that lucky. So how would I go about claiming this prize?" I asked. She proceeded to talk about the value of the car and how lucky I was to have won, after listening to her for 5 minutes I started to lose my patience, I kept trying to bring her back to the main point on claiming the prize.

I think she finally sensed that I was getting restless and finally said "Right, so to do a handover of the car we will need to clear the tax portion, we have calculated this for you and it comes to the amount of $2,000, we will need to have this cleared as per regulations by the tax office", at this point I knew what was coming next, she asked to make the deposit ASAP so I can claim the prize.

All this point I was a bit tired from talking to her, so I said "Oh there is a tax? That’s ok then, you can have the car.", "Excuse me?" she asked. "Yea… I don’t really want to pay the tax, so you can have the car…", and the next thing I hear was the phone disconnecting.

So in the end I didn’t end up getting scammed, but I did find this attempt more interesting than the standard phone or email scam, as it took some preparation work from the scammers. The scammer had to have done some research on the upcoming legitimate events, and tried to associate themselves with the event.

I could imaging some of the people might have gotten fooled as they see the real event on TV and thought that she was really calling from Mercedes... or maybe she was from Mercedes and I've made a big mistake...