We only want to draw your attention to the second paragraph where it states: “The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. We won’t bother citing this rather long message, which is designed to look like an email from Google, in full. Here’s another example of a scam that no doubt appears to be perfectly plausible from its authors’ point of view: The fraudsters obviously expect some recipients to suspect a scam and attempt to convince them otherwise. The second message promises a lottery win from Coca Cola, but, inexplicably, is sent from a French Yahoo! server: Participating in lotteries without knowing about it There is no sign of a lottery at the site and never has been. Instead, the browser redirects to wn.com (World News). Yes, that’s right, no such site actually exists. Highly inquisitive users may well wonder about the domain from which the message was sent. Moreover, if the lottery is European, then why does Mr. All communication in such cases would be sent to and from a business address. Marshall Ellis in Nigeria, who for some reason uses the public service, is bound to convince us that what we are dealing with here is spam – lottery organizers just don’t ask winners to contact them at their personal email addresses. If nothing else, the request to contact a Mr. After all, you haven’t used your address to participate in a prize draw, have you? And even if you have, it was unlikely to have been the European lottery named here. One email informs recipients that they have won a prize in a European lottery:Įxpressions such as “your email address was selected” or “your address has won” are telltale signs that the message is part of a scam. Here are some typical ‘Lottery letters’ that make use of the ploys most favored by the fraudsters. In other words, a fake lottery message will always contain some type of discrepancy. to the address of an “agent” or “manager”. In some fake lottery messages, you may be asked to reply to an e-mail address which is different from the sender’s address, e.g. Please remember that messages from a reputable company are always sent from corporate addresses. In some cases, the fake messages are well written, but they are sent from public mail servers like, or. Serious lottery companies have editors and copywriters to make sure their letters are written properly. This is a sure sign of a fraudulent message. A lot of them contain bad spelling mistakes.
If the prize draw has actually taken place and you have actually participated in the lottery, you will be addressed by your name (or the number of the lottery ticket that you purchased), and the letter will contain the address and the name of the company that organized the lottery.įake lottery win notifications may come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The reader’s next question may be: what if I have in fact taken part in a lottery in the hope of a big win? The answer is simple: if you haven’t participated in a lottery, all “winning” messages are fraudulent. So, how can a user identify a fraudulent message? However, once they receive the “fee”, the fraudsters disappear, and the unwary user has little chance of ever finding them.īe careful! Do not fall for these scams! Telltale signs of lottery fraud The “lucky winner” often sees this money as insignificant in comparison to the sum they’ve just won. This is ostensibly to meet expenses like money transfer commission, taxes, fees for opening a bank account, etc.
In order to receive the winnings, the user is asked to send money – ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars – to a specified account. Sounds tempting, but alas, this is nothing more than network fraud. These glad tidings share plenty of similarities: the winner is notified that he has won a handsome sum of money in a certain lottery and must contact a lottery official to receive it.
It’s amazing how often we get a message telling us we’ve won the lottery.
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