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Fraud makes winner refuse prizes

(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-10-17 08:58

Mobile telephone users in Tianjin are so alert to text-messaging fraud that they have refused to claim money given to them as a prize in a lottery sponsored by a local post office.

When called by the post office about the prizes, almost none of them believed it and most just hung up, a staff member from the post office said, adding that they had to inform the winners repeatedly about their good luck.

So far this year, about 20,000 yuan (US$2,529) in cash awards, including 3 top-grade prizes, each of 4,999 yuan (US$632), have not been claimed by prize-winners because they regarded the prizes as frauds.