Lottery Scam Email-Scenarios

SCENARIO/METHOD:

Are you suddenly receiving e-mails and letters from legitimate sounding lottery organizations that assure you are winners in lottery drawings recently held in distant countries? And, you are in line to receive hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars? This is an old scam, but every time there is a large multi-state “Power Ball” jackpot, the intensity picks up. The prize money varies from lottery e-mail/letter to e-mail/letter. They may even have an “official check” to deposit, drawn on a foreign bank. The official check may be dated in the future, be counterfeit, or drawn on a non-existent financial institution.

Each lottery e-mail or letter is rich in detail about when and where the drawing was held, the lucky ticket numbers, how the fortunate person or company name was included in the drawing, who was to pay out the funds, the payer's phone and fax numbers plus his web site information, and how much money is supposed to be coming. Most often, all the "supporting" information is fictitious. However, in other cases, names of real lotteries and banks are involved, and look-alike websites are accessed through URLs similar to those of the real corporations or institutions. These are used by the con artists as proof that the scheme is legitimate.

So far we've seen versions of this fraud come in from "De Lotto Netherlands," "Delotto Netherlands Sweepstakes Lottery," "Diamond Lotto South Africa," "Alpha Lottery International," "Weltlotto-Firma WorldLotto/International Programs," and "International Lotto Commission in collaboration with El Gordo de la Primitiva."

They are all the same scam. The scam artist changes the names of the lottery handing out the winnings, and some of the stories about why the lucky ones are suddenly in line to receive large amounts of money for a lottery they don't remember entering. This is just part of the scam. Those who try to collect their "winnings" soon find themselves receiving e-mails or letters informing them that they have to pay facilitation fees before the big pay outs will come to them. There are no lottery winnings waiting, but rather scam artists ready to trick people into wiring "handling fees" directly into their accounts. The "lucky" winners scramble to pay the fees while the clock is ticking, but they never receive any winnings.

Just as in the more usual form of the Nigerian Scam, one scheme after another to move the fortune will fall through, with each new attempt funded by the one waiting for his multi-million dollar payout; the victim of the lottery version will pay for the privilege of receiving nothing. The money always flows in the opposite direction, but those conned by such schemes often don't realize this until after they have sent large amounts of money.

The victim receives repeated cautions to keep matters confidential until final payout is made, "as part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants." The thieves don't want news of false winnings being told, because if the information reaches the real lottery people, they will inform the victims about the scheme.