Scam emails
usually use what appear to be legitimate addresses such as
MegaMillionsPrizes@______.com or U.S.PowerballPrizes@_____.com. For the
unsuspecting or the naive, they seem to appear legitimate and they will simply
fall for the scam.
The letter or the
email will then require the supposed-to-be winner to reply with their personal
information so they can send the prize money. In some instances, the letter
also contains a real-looking check for a few hundred or few thousand dollars.
Of course, the check is not real but it will be enough to make some people
really excited and get hooked with the scam.
The bottom line
of the scam is that they want you to send them money. Scammers will tell you
that you need to send them payment for the taxes on your winnings before you
can get your prize. In the event that they send you a check, they will tell you
that you have to send first your payment for the taxes before they can clear
the check for payment. If the amount in the check is in the thousands of
dollars and the amount that you need to pay in the form of tax will be only a
few hundreds, you might really be tempted to do just what they are asking you
to do thinking that after all, you already have in your possession their check.
If you fall for
it and you send the payment for the tax, usually through Western Union, you
will discover later that the check in your possession is fake. The bank will
not honor it.
Don't fall for
the scam
In these days
when almost everybody is trying to make a fast buck out of anybody, people must
not be so naive to fall for lottery scams. The only thing to remember here is
that you do not win a prize for a contest or a lottery game you did not enter.
When you receive a letter or an e-mail announcing that you won, you will know
right away that it is a scam when you know you did not play any lottery game
online. If you do play a lottery game by buying a ticket, you will never get a
letter or e-mail announcing that you won because you have the ticket with you
and nobody will ever know the numbers in your ticket.
Warning bells of
a scam
In addition to
the fact that you did not enter any lottery game online, the following are
clear give-away of a scam:
The e-mail
address of the lottery uses Yahoo or Hotmail. Legitimate lottery games have
their own domain name.
Most of the
scams originate from non-English speaking countries and errors in spelling and
wrong grammar could be a simple give-away. The spelling and grammar could be
correct but the wording or the phrasing could be strange and uncommon in the
United States.
Description of
the prize you are supposed to have won does not match the prize category of the
lottery game they are referring to. Example, the letter may announce that you
have won $20 million in the prize category "A" of U.S. Mega Millions
or U.S. Powerball. There is no such thing as category "A" prize in
either lottery.
The name of the
lottery game is the name of a company that is not involved in lotteries such as
Microsoft, Apple, Google, or even Los Angeles Times.
The letter or
e-mail will mention that the lottery is sponsored by a famous individual such
as Bill Gates, Jesse Jackson, or the
Sultan of Brunei. Lotteries are not sponsored by individual persons.
You won in the
lottery as a result of your participation in a survey. Legitimate surveys do
not offer prize money. Surveys that offer prize money or lottery tickets will
be asking for your personal information to participate, a scheme practice by ID
thefts.
The letter or
email announces that the participants in the lottery were selected randomly
through e-mail addresses from different countries.
The lottery
involves a claim agent and you have to go through this agent before you can
claim your prize money.
There is a
strong warning that you must keep your winning the lottery strictly
confidential and must not be known by the public until the prize money has been
finally remitted to your bank account.
The most
important warning bell of a scam is the request for money. Usually, the first
letter or e-mail will not ask you for anything yet but information on where to
remit the prize money. As you show your interest in the prize money, the 2nd or
3rd letter or e-mail will then ask you to transmit through Western Union an
amount of money as either agent's fee or tax payment before your winnings will
be remitted to your bank.
Getting involved
into this kind of scam could prove messy. In instances where you are asked to
deposit a check or money order to you bank and you have to send or remit back
to an unknown account a lesser amount, you will end up paying the full amount
of the money you send only to learn later that the check you deposited in your
own account bounced or is fake.
The best thing to
do when you receive a letter with the announcement that you win in a lottery
you did not enter is simply to toss the letter. If the announcement comes in
the form of an e-mail, just delete it. Or, you can forward it to agencies such
as osalotteries.net/scamwatch which monitor and update the public on most
recent lottery scams.
If you want your
lottery dreams to come true, you must do something about it. Go to legitimate lottery service providers to purchase your lottery tickets or sign up for
a subscription. Only then can you start dreaming big.
No comments:
Post a Comment