I can’t believe my good fortune!  Here I am waiting for my Fedex package to be delivered, waiting for my money from the IRS to arrive (nope, still not here yet, 38 days and counting), and something amazing happens.

This letter came in the mail today, and I’m not sure what made me happier: the fact that I’ve won free airfare, or the fact that I get to blog about another scam so soon after the FedEx thing.

Things that clued me in this was not legit:

1. The envelope was hand addressed to me.  This means someone somewhere used a pen to write my name and address on the front. This is almost always a sign that it’s a chain letter or some kind of scam. If this were from a legitimate company giving away airline tickets, they would either use a program to print my name on the envelope or use a envelope with a little window so my printed address on the letter would show through. Amateurs.
2. There is no such airline called “American Airways,” nor could I find any company by that name.
3.  Whoever wrote the letter did a bad job with “professional letter writing” because they put the “NOTE:” even before the address (“Dear Steven”).
4. Notice the second paragraph where they say they have attempted to contact me multiple times.  Thirty years ago this would have sounded legitimate, because of the number of people with rotary phones (kids, ask your parents), answering machines being unreliable, etc.  But now?  Everybody Almost everybody has voicemail, email, etc.  And this is the first letter I’ve gotten from these people, so no, they have not attempted to contact me several times.
5. It fails to pass the test of common sense.  I didn’t enter a contest for airline tickets, so why would they be giving them away for free?
6. It fails the google test. I went to google.com and searched “American Airways” and several of the results were talking about this scam.

There are scammers out there people. Stay on your toes.  Just throw this stuff out with the junk mail, and you’ll be better off.