Lottery scam
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A lottery scam is a type of
Identification
There are several ways of identifying a fake lottery email:[2][3]
- Unless someone has bought a ticket, one cannot have won a prize. There are no such things as "email" draws or any other lottery where "no tickets were sold". This is simply another invention by the scammer to make the victims believe that they have won.
- The scammer will ask the victims to pay a fee in advance to receive their prize. All genuine lotteries simply subtract any fees and tax from the prize. Regardless of what the scammer claims this fee is for (such as courier charges, bank charges, or various imaginary certificates), these are all fabricated by the scammer to obtain money from victims.
- Scam lottery emails will often come from free email accounts such as etc.
- Scam emails will often insist that the recipient keep their win confidential; this is done to avoid others advising them that the email is a scam.
- There may be inconsistencies between currencies and countries, such as for example the message being sent to an individual who lives in the UK and claiming the amount won to be in US dollars and the lottery itself to be based in South Africa.
- As with many scam email messages in general, lottery scam messages may contain spelling and/or grammatical issues.
Most email lottery scams are a type of advance fee fraud.[2]
Mis-selling by lottery "win"
Another type of lottery scam is a
Sometimes lottery scam messages are sent by ordinary postal mail;[4] their content and style is similar to the e-mail versions. For example, some scams by letter misuse the names of the legal Spanish lotteries, such as El Gordo de la Primitiva.[5]
In the UK a number of legitimate lottery sites have dedicated pages on the subject of scams.[6]
Blackmail variation
This variation relies on the target agreeing to accept a sum of money that they know that they are not entitled to and then, when they refuse to pay the advance fee, the scammers then threaten to report them unless blackmail is paid.
A typical scenario is when the emails are sent to staff of a multinational corporation with offices/branches throughout the world using their work email address. The fraudsters will represent themselves as the agents of a scheme that the multinational has won. An example being the "winners" of a prize as a result of placing an advertisement with the supposed promoter of the scheme in an obscure (and sometimes fictional) trade magazine published in an equally obscure country. The scammers will allege that they have written to the corporation's headquarters and made every attempt to pass on the "prize" but without success, but as they (the scammers) don't want to lose face with the promoters they are anxious to discharge their responsibilities to pass on the prize money, they will ask for the target's personal banking details to allow the "prize" to be sent and trust the target to pass it on to their employers. This immediately makes the target vulnerable to a phishing attack but, more significantly, to blackmail attempts. When they refuse to pay any advance fee the fraudsters threaten to report the matter to their employers and/or the police.
References
- ^ "How to identify and avoid hoax or fraudulent e-mail scams," Microsoft Archived January 18, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b "FBI Common Fraud Schemes". US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ^ "Lotto.net 8 Ways to Identify Lottery Scams". Lotto.net. Retrieved 19 October 2017.
- ^ "Lottery scams by email or sms- Know their truth". InfoChacha. 2013-09-04. Archived from the original on 2013-11-10. Retrieved 2013-12-07.
- ^ "Top 10 List of Current Scams - 2008". Consumer Fraud Reporting. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ^ "Lottery Scams". Lottery.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-12-07.
External links
- World Lottery Association warns of foreign lottery fraud risks, the World Lottery Association
- The Rundown on Lottery Scams
- Lottery Scams (information by the U.S. Department of State)
- Lottery fraud (FBI)