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Centennial Woman Nearly Duped By Scam Using Publishers Clearing House Name

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (CBS4) - It was a family's dream come true -- a million dollars from Publishers Clearing House. It was money they badly needed, but giving money away to win it raised some red flags.

"I actually read it a few times because I thought it was too good to be true, in which case it was," Amanda Davis said.

It looked real -- a guarantee from Publishers Clearing House that Davis had won.

"We got the email saying we'd won the million dollars," she said. "We've played their sweepstakes for many years … this is the first time that we received a correspondence back from them."

The email said Davis, a mother of six, needed to send back personal information.

"They needed your name and address and phone number so they knew where they were coming to be able to give you the prize check, which to me made sense, so we did send them that information," Davis said. "Any working family could use this money. We definitely would have loved to have won."

CLEARING HOUSE SCAM Amanda Davis
Amanda Davis (credit: CBS)

But Davis was soon asked to send in hundreds of dollars for her prize check to be delivered by a courier.

"So it looks legit, it looks very real," she said. "To the naked eye, to anyone looking at this website, you would assume this is a good company."

Davis and her husband were on the verge of sending in the money, but a phone call to Publishers Clearing House crushed her winning dreams.

"Your very first gut instinct is to roll the dice, what's $325 to get your million dollar check?" she said. "It's shattering finding out that it was a scam. I'm lucky I didn't lose money on this, but how many other families are out there seeing the same exact thing I'm seeing and they're sending the money?"

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