Lottery Frauds And How To Avoid Them

“Our Dear Winner, You have won the sum of £710,000 (SEVEN HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND,POUNDS STERLING ) from British Lotto on our 2008 new year charity bonanza. The winning ticket was selected from a Data Base of Internet Email Users, from which your Address came out as the winning coupon."

"We hereby urge you to claim the winning amount quickly as this is a monthly lottery. Failure to claim your win will result into the reversion of the fund to our following month.”

This is just one example of a recent lottery scam email: a curse which seems to be all too common. Over 70 000 victims are known but there may be many more who are reluctant to be identified. The authors latch on to the latent greed in all of us to persuade their victims to part with their personal details and then later substantial amounts of money as an ‘administration fee’ or perhaps costs of mailing. One gentleman admitted to parting with £10 000 and an elderly couple were on the verge of giving their £20 000 savings to a fraudster but were fortunately dissuaded by a bank official and a police officer.

A particular scam was investigated by the British Office of Fair Trading who uncovered fifteen call centres in Canada which had already received over £1.6 million from victims in Britain. The increase in modern mass communications means hoax lottery demands can come from almost any country but for some reason Canada and Nigeria are the most commonly encountered.
Often fraudulent corespondence of this type comes from people whose first language is not English and this usually shows in grammatical errors or a bad choice of words. There are some examples in the letter quoted at the beginning of this article. Should you discover similar mistakes in correspondence or telephone calls be very cautious.

Other points to look out for are:

1. If you do win the UK lottery draw, you are expected to lodge your claim by taking your ticket to a retailer. If you are a member of a syndicate the organizer will advise you. No lottery organization will ever contact winners.

2. You never need to provide identification. Holding the winning ticket is identification enough.

3. There will never be any advance fee to pay before you receive your winnings.

4. In any case you can not win a lottery without buying a ticket or joining a syndicate. You will have either paid money for the ticket or a subscription to the syndicate. Whatever else you will certainly know in advance that you are in the lottery.

5. If you have any doubt you can check with the British National Lottery organizers direct by visiting their website. Never use the details provided on any correspondence you may receive.

There are a few good websites which also offer advice on how to act if you receive bogus correspondence or a telephone call, one of which belongs to the Metropolitan Police in London, and you can even report fraudsters. The best action to take however is to delete the email, destroy the letter or put the telephone down. Do not take it any further.

If you would like to find out more about the lottery, how to play or even how to earn money, please visit UK lottery draw.

Discover How The Lottery Funds Britain’s Heritage

The English Electric Canberra was built in Belfast. A PR9 variant is being restored by The Ulster Aviation Society to go alongside their existing eleven aircraft in their hangar at Long Kesh. Eventually the Canberra is intended to be the focus of illustrated talks, guided tours and an educational DVD to inform people about this piece of Northern Irish history.

With such projects, financing is always a challenge, which is why the Aviation Society was delighted to receive a £50 000 grant from the Heritage Lottery fund.

The Heritage Lottery Fund was set up in 1994 and is charged with distributing the income from the UK lottery fund, particularly with regard to historical and cultural projects. Set up at the same time as the British National Lottery, the Fund has supported 33 900 projects across the country with a total of £4.4 billion.

Between the Sperrin Mountains and Londonderry in Northern Ireland lies the one hundred-kilometre area of the Faughan Valley. This is an area of ancient woodland set in a picturesque river valley. £1.2 million is to be allocated to the area by the Heritage Lottery Fund for use by a partnership of The Woodland Trust, The Rural Area Partnership In Derry (RAPID) and Derry City Council in improving access for the local population and restoring woodland habitats. Schemes being planned include walking festivals, rural crafts training, Heritage Weeks and woodland visits.

Brain Poots of the Woodland Trust says, “We are absolutely delighted to receive the backing of the Heritage Lottery Fund. With our collective efforts, we can make a positive and lasting contribution to the beautiful Faughan Valley; it’s good news for the landscape, for wildlife and for people.”

Many great causes are supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund using money from the British National Lottery. It is great news therefore that as a result of an increase in the income received by the UK lottery draw, the Heritage Lottery Funds budget has been increased by £25 million annually. This means the Fund’s budget is now £205 million per year.

It is clear the money from the UK lottery draw has been used to great effect by the Heritage Lottery Fund and so the increase in money available will help more libraries, museums, conservation projects and historical buildings in the years to come. With every weeks lottery draw the whole country wins.

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Discover The Chances Of Winning The Lottery

A winner of the UK lottery draw recently was Kevin Halstead who, despite winning £2.3 million, has decided to keep his job driving a bus for seventeen years. “I don’t want to pack my job in. I asked my boss for time off, a month maybe two, but I don’t want to cut myself off from my friends and I really enjoy my job,” he said. Mr Halstead will however buy his daughter a pony and is looking to move home back into the village of his birth.

Players of the British National Lottery must imagine what it would be like to win the top prize but what are the chances of winning in the same way as Mr Halstead?

Actually the odds are roughly the same as becoming an astronaut. Winning the jackpot has been calculated as 1 in 13 983 816 while being struck by lightning stands at 1 in 2.32 million. The mathematician Bill Hartson has worked out that a person could purchase £100 000 worth of tickets every time the jackpot rolls over and reduce the odds of winning to 1 in 14.

Everyone concentrates on the top prize but of course there are several other chances to win money available. On average one million players will win a prize of some description every week. Jackpot winners have to match all six numbers selected from 1 to 49 but prizes are also won with between five and three balls matched. The money available in these lower prizes ranges from £100 000 to £10 and the probability of winning drops from 1 in 2.3 million to 1 in 56.7.

A more efficient way of playing the UK lottery draw would be to join a group and play as a syndicate. Any money won by a member would be distributed among the group. This improves the chances of a member winning money considerably. One in four of the jackpots won tend to be collected by syndicates.

The Internet publicises several ways to improve the odds in the lottery but one of the most interesting is the Elottery system. The initial advantages are mathematical: for five pounds a week each member enters forty-four times into both the weekly draws (on Wednesday and Saturday) as a member of a syndicate of forty-nine players. Members actually only select five numbers each and the sixth number is selected in turn from each of the remaining forty-four. The probability of receiving a prize thus reduces to 1 in 13, which represents a 702% improvement.

There is no doubt the UK lottery draw is always going to be just that: a lottery. Schemes do exist to improve a player’s chances in the draw and syndicates do seem to be a smarter way to play the British National lottery.

Should you wish to find out more about playing the lottery or even earning an income from it, please visit UK lottery draw.