Lottery Scam Warnings

There seems to be lots of scam emails doing the rounds which tell you that you have won a jackpot prize in a fake lottery. Did you enter it (non pc version of this page)?

You'll find links to examples of these emails (below) published without the writers' permission, in the hope that awareness will, somewhere along the line, save somebody from being parted with their savings. Users who responded to their emails have been asked to send sums such as £7,000 or €5,625 as a "service fee" to receive their 'winnings'. If you pay that money you then receive another letter, claiming to be from the Gaming Board of Great Britain, and with a forged signature of a board member, asking for €20,000.

So far, at least 10,000 people have lost their money - please don't let the next one be you!!

On a serious side, many people are asking us what can be done about this. The sad fact is that there are so many scams that the authorities can not chase them all. The Metropolitan Police have established a resource to assist in combating specific types of high value fraud, which include a contact email address. The OFT uncovered 15 call centres in Canada solely targeting the UK, one of which is known to have conned British victims out of £600,000.

If you receive any of the emails or direct mailings mentioned below, we recommend that you delete them and make your friends and colleagues aware of their existence. Do NOT reply to them and DO NOT complete their online claim forms.

NOTE: the actual text of emails varies, as do the so-called 'winning numbers', the prize values and name of companies involved. Some variations ask you to complete an emailed or online claim form at a url like "linkfinanceandtrustltd.com" which forwards to anonymous pages on MSN. Others ask you to fill the form in and fax it to them. DO NOT complete the form as you will be giving away personal information to the scamsters.

As a somewhat humorous aside, we received one of these emails addressed to "Dear Sales" (email address: sales@lottery) informing us that we were one of six lucky winners of £2.5 million. The scammer had, however, used CC in their email instead of BCC and you could see that the same email had been sent to several hundred people all with email addresses beginning with the letter "s"!

There's also a group dedicated to scamming the scammers. iI you want a laugh at their expense, read this.

Samples of the scam emails

These are samples, and there are literaly hundreds of variations. Please do not send us the one you've received - we've been inundated and don't have space to publish them all.

"Lottery.co.uk" - UK British National Lottery Scam: Read Email

"UK Lotto" - Financial Securities Co. Scam: Read Email

"Category B winner" - UK International Lottery Scam: Read Email

"Bonus Lottery Promotionr" - The UK National Lotto Scam: Read Email

"UK Queen's Sweep" - International Programs: Read Email
(Good one this, apparently the Queen's Palace is now in Manchester!!!)

"Euro - Afro American Sweepstake" Lottery Scam: Read Email

Sample "Procedures for Prize Transfer": Read Email