Jalopnik: lottery

Scammers Using Toyota's Name To Rip Off Consumers

Travis Hudson — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:20:00 EDT

By way of Toyota's own Open Road Blog is word of a new scam using Toyota's name in vain to obtain financial info for use in identity theft and raiding bank accounts. The scam involves a letter and sometimes an included check branded with Toyota's logo. A couple of different forms of the scam are circulating — one of them involves a mystery-shopper program. Another is a about a lottery awarding free money and a Toyota vehicle. And let's be clear here — if you fell for this, we've got a Nigerian lottery we'd like to discuss with you.

Come on people, Toyota may seem pretty nice, what with all of their hybrids and talk of saving the world and whatever — everyone knows that's the real scam. Don't buy it, just like you shouldn't buy a letter arriving in your box telling you you've just won a brand new car. And if you do believe that, again, let's talk about that Nigerian lottery we can cut you in on. [Toyota Open Road Blog] (Photo Credit: Futurama Wiki)

34-Year FoMoCo Vet Wins Lottery, Promptly Disses Dearborn's Products

Murilee Martin — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:00:00 EDT

David Sneath, a longtime Ford parts warehouseman out of Livonia, hit the $136,000,000 Mega Millions jackpot on Tuesday. Rather than simply announcing that he planned to drop his job like a monkey dropping a hot penny and embark on a whirlwind squanderathon that will leave future generations of Livonians speaking of the events in hushed tones, Sneath announced to reporters gathered at Lottery HQ that he would never, ever buy a vehicle made by his emphatically erstwhile employer: "I worked for Ford Motor Co.," he said. "I won't be buying a Ford product." You tell 'em, Dave! [Associated Press]

Update: According to the Detroit Free Press, Sneath didn't mean to say "I won't be buying a Ford product." Instead, he'd meant to say "I won't be buying a foreign product," and plans to buy a new Navigator right away.

$35,000 In Lottery Tickets Used To Create Hummer H3

Wes Siler — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:00:00 EDT

This Hummer H3 is built from $35,000 in losing lottery tickets. No sheet metal here, folks. The piece is by Brooklyn-based artists Adam Eckstrom and Lauren Was and it's entitled Ghost of a Dream. The tickets came from local bodegas, where they were discarded by unlucky patrons.

"We started talking about what people dream about when they scratch the coin against the ticket, and almost always the first thing they dream about doing is buying a car," Was told the Providence Journal. "This is a ghost of all those dreams."

"We wanted the piece to contain the value of a Hummer," Eckstrom told the paper. "And $35,000 is also the price of the piece."