Last week, Camille Wheeler received the good news. The caller said he was trying to deliver a prize to her home from the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. The connection was poor, so Camille’s husband, Walt, returned to the Caller ID display screen and called the 10-digit incoming number starting with the 876 area code. You can’t win a contest, lottery or sweepstakes you never entered. But Walt always enters the PCH sweepstakes and wanted to know if they’d won something. However, all the 75-year-old North Port resident heard was a number of pre-recorded messages in between hold times. Eventually frustrated, he hung up and contacted me asking if this whole thing is a scam.

Walt, it’s an attempted scam all right. Direct from Jamaica.