Are you a lottery winner too?
You'll be green with envy when I tell you what happened to me today. I won $2,500,000.00! That's right, two million,
five hundred thousand dollars!
Fantastic news eh?
Although, to be honest, winning huge sums of money is becoming a little old hat.
It is my TENTH big win so far this year!
Or at least it would be my tenth big win if I was actually able to collect my winnings.
And the reason why I can't collect any of the millions of dollars I supposedly win according to the e-mails that regularly arrive in my inbox?
It's one big scam.
Here's the e-mail I received today:
CONGRATULATIONS!!! CONGRATULATIONS.
FROM THE DESK OF THE DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL PRIZE AWARD DEPT
Attn Lucky Winner,
WINNING NOTIFICATION FOR CATEGORY "A" WINNER ONLY
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the last final annual draw of
our Lottery International Programs.
The online cyber lotto draws was conducted from an exclusive list of
2500,000,000 e-mail addresses of individual and corporate bodies picked by
an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. No tickets
were sold.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as a
winner in the category "A" with the following numbers attached Ref Number:
SURF 90 ES 9414,Batch Number: 483881545-NL/2007 and Ticket Number: PP 3802
/8907-01
You are therefore to receive a cash prize of $2,500,000.00. (Two Million
Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) from the total payout
CONGRATULATIONS!!!.
Your prize award has been insured with your e-mail address and will be
transferred to you upon meeting our requirements, statutory obligations,
verifications, validations and satisfactory report.
To file in for the processing of your prize winnings, you are advised to
contact our Certified and Accredited claims agent for category "A" winners
with the information below:
*************************************
Name: Hanz Daniel
Email: XXXXX@yahoo.de
Phone: +31 XXXXXXXXX
*************************************
You are advice to provide him with the following information:
Names:
Telephone/Fax number:
Nationality:
Age:
Occupation:
NOTE: All winnings must be claimed not later than 14 days, thereafter
unclaimed funds would be included in the next stake. Remember to quote your
reference information in all correspondence.
You are to keep all lotto information confidential, especially your
reference and ticket numbers. This is important as a case of double claims
will not be entertained. Members of the affiliate agencies are automatically
not allowed to participate in this program.
Furthermore, should there be any change of address do inform our agent as
soon as possible. Congratulations once more from our members of staff and
thank you for being part of our promotional program.
Yours Faithfully,
Walter Jones.
Lottery Coordinator.
Thank you and congratulations!!!
Chances are the people behind this scam are Nigerian, but it's unlikely that they are operating out of Nigeria. Instead, they can be found all over Europe, sending out thousands upon thousands of these bogus e-mails, knowing that they only have to snare a handful of gullible people to be the ral winners here.
I've removed the phone number from the e-mail, but as you can see it has the international dialling code for Holland - +31. Many operate out of internet cafes in and around Amsterdam. Madrid in Spain is another "centre of excellence" for scammers.
Interestingly enough though, the email address given is a German Yahoo one. You have to wonder why most of the organisations giving away millions operate using free e-mail addresses, but there you go. Professionalism isn't their strong point.
What they are good at though is wringing as many pennies as possible out of victims.
Once you contact them to claim your winnings, you will be asked to do one of three things:
1. Provide personal details including bank information and proof of identity such as a copy of your driving licence or passport.
In fact just about everything they will need for you to be the latest victim of identity fraud.
2. Pay them a fee for administration / insurance / party poppers so that the money can be released to you.
Guess what? You hand over the money and you never hear from them again. Either that, or they will need even more money to cover yet another expense. And then you will never hear from them again.
3. Open a bank account so that they can deposit your winnings.
The catch is that the bank account requires an opening deposit which has to be paid into it before you can receive your winnings. Of course there is no bank account and any deposit you pay disappears as quickly as the scammers.
Our advice as always. If it sounds to good to be true, hit that delete button.
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