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The Lottery Scam
Lottery scams have been in existence for a long time but only because people still fall for them. The vast majority of these scams are sent out by email congratulating the person on their win and asking for them to reply urgently with some personal details. The next step is for the scammer to email some fake documentation which must be completed to allow their barrister or company to release the funds to you - very often they will use a 2nd email account for the 'legal' aspect. And here is the main point of this scam... before the barrister can release the funds he will need a payment from you (to cover the transport and processing fees) which must be sent via money transfer. After the payment is sent it is well known for the scammer to then ask again for more money for insurance purposes, excess bank charges to release the funds - anything they can scam you for!
Rest assured you will never see the money you sent off again and obviously you won't receive your lottery winnings as there was no lottery in the first place!
Lottery scams use various familiar company names to make their emails look more appealing and more likely for someone to fall for the scam. This week we've received lottery scam emails from Yahoo Lottery, AOL Lottery, Microsoft Lottery and BBC Lottery to name only a few. And interestingly none of these companies even run a lottery! You can see an example of a lottery scam in our scambaits page here .
Also be wary of letters sent through the post regarding lottery wins and asking for money up front to process the win - again these are fake and tend to be sent out to certain areas at the same time. they originate from overseas although this may not be obvious on the envelope/letter. Tear them up and dispose of them in your recycle bin!
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