“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.
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.
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