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Online lottery scam is nothing new. Recently, I have received quite a few such emails. This mails typically start with or have subject “YOU WON”, “CLAIM YOUR MONEY” to draw your attention. I thought of writing an article to bring about little awareness.

So first lets see what is a lottery scam?

A typical lottery scam begins with an unexpected email notification that “You have won!” a large sum of money in a lottery. The recipient of the message — the target of the scam — is usually told to keep the notice secret, “due to a mix-up in some of the names and numbers,” and to contact a “claims agent.” After contacting the agent, the target of the scam will be asked to pay “processing fees” or “transfer charges” so that the winnings can be distributed, but will never receive any lottery payment. Many email lottery scams use the names of legitimate lottery organizations, but this does not mean the legitimate organizations are in any way involved with the scams.

There are several ways to recognize a fake lottery email:

• Unless you have bought a ticket, you 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 you believe you’ve won.
• The scammer will ask you to pay a fee before you can receive your prize. It is illegal for a real lottery to charge any sort of fee. It does not matter what they say this fee is for (courier charges, bank charges, various imaginary certificates — these are all made up by the scammer to get money out of you). All real lotteries subtract any fee and tax from the prize. They never ask you to pay it in advance.
• Scam lottery emails will nearly always come from free email accounts such as Yahoo!, Hotmail, MSN, etc, and no real business will use a free email account.

Email lottery scams are a type of advance fee fraud.

A typical email lottery scam will read as follows:

POWERBALL LOTTO
Customer Service
28 TANFIELD ROAD,
CROYDON.UK
Ref: 475061725
Batch: 7056490902/188
Winning No: GB8701/LPRC

WINNING NOTIFICATION

Congratulations,

We are delighted to inform you of your prize release on April 25th,
2008 from the Powerball International Lottery Program; which is fully
based on an electronic selection of winners using their e-mail
addresses from different sites.Your email address was attached to
ticket number: 17212, Serial Number 7741137002. This batch draws the
lucky numbers of and bonus number , which consequently won the lottery
in the second category. Therefore, you have been approved a lump sum
pay of US$500,000.00 (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS) in cash credit
file Ref: ILP/HW 47509/02 from the total cash prize shared amongst
eight lucky winners in this category.

HOW TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE:

In other to proceed with your prize claim, you are to send the
information below accompanying your next email -

Full
Name:………..Sex:………..Age:………….Telephone:……….Occupation………..

Contact Address:…………..Country:………….Marital
Status:…………Nationality: ……

(1) TRAVELLING TO THE UNITED KINGDOM FOR CASH COLLECTION (Send flight
itinerary to confirm your arrival/appointment
Date}:……………………..

(2) BY COURIER
SERVICE:…………………………………………….

(3) ELECTRONIC WIRE TRANSFER:……………………………..

Simply contact our Claims Officer/Pay Master, Rev. David Clinton,
Telephone: +447045707579
Telephone: +447045768932
Email: davidclintonclaimsofficerhk@yahoo.com.hk

NOTE: ALL WINNINGS MUST BE CLAIMED WITHIN 30 DAYS FROM THE DATE OF THIS
NOTIFICATION. UNCLAIMED FUNDS WILL BE RETURNED TO THE NATIONAL
TREASURY FOR OUR NEXT DRAW.

Sincerely, Mrs. Elizabeth Church
Goodluck from me and members of staff of the POWERBALL LOTTO Online
coordinator for POWERBALL LOTTO International Program.

How to avoid them?

The best way is delete them from your inbox and report them as spam via your ISP. Also, you may forward the email to the address supplied on the FraudWatch International website. Never ever reply to such emails.

Brett M.Christensen has written a few how to and what to do articles in this regard. Read more ……

Lottery scam is dangerous and mostly originate from African countries like Nigeria, Ghana etc. Btw, I have seen few UK lottery scams mails also. Never send any money for this claims as you are never up to get anything. There are reports that people who went to these countries to collect their promised money have been beaten up, kidnapped or even murdered. Visit this website to learn more about it, what to do in various situations and save yourself. Please do not send any information about yourself, as this can be used for identity theft.