Overtom's Weblog

PRIZE IN THE LOTTERY!!!! (13 june 2006)

Hurray!! Great news!!

Today I received this e-mail:

The National Lottery
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)
Ref:UK/9420X2/68

Batch:074/05/ZY369
WINNING NOTIFICATION
We happily announce to you the draw (#996) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY, online Sweepstakes International program held 2nd June 2006.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:with Serialnumber 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 07 22 20 28 40 37 38 Bonus Ball which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of ?250,000 (Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterlings) in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/03. This is [blah blah blah] ...

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.

This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned. To file for your claim, please contact our claims agent:

Mr.LEY BONE
Email:leybone2@yahoo.co.uk

Goodluck from me and members of staff of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY.

Yours faithfully,

Brian Hunt
Online coordinator for UK NATIONAL LOTTERY,
Sweepstakes International Program.
Open 7 days 8am-8pm

250,000 pounds!! You'll understand how happy I was!

But I'd never bought any tickets of this lottery. So maybe I'd better first see what this lottery is all about.

So I typed "UK NATIONAL LOTTERY" into Google.

One of the first texts I came up with was this:

UK Lottery E-mail Scams Warning

There has been an ever-growing number of UK lottery e-mail scams that have been turning up both in my mailbox and the mailboxes of visitors to this site - my first piece of advice is that you should always ignore them and delete them [blah blah blah] ...

The first e-mail you will receive will usually avoid mentioning any "processing/claim/courier fee" that you'll have pay to them - this is to try to hook you in to the scam and not scare you off right away. Instead, the scammer will ask for as much personal information as possible (full name, address, date of birth etc.) - this is useful for them if you get so deep into the scam that they might want to try forging documents with your info on them. Don't give them any info (you deleted that e-mail anyway didn't you ?).

The scammer will often say "don't tell anyone about this win" (by "anyone", they probably mean the police, so that they won't be tracked down and prosecuted !), which is a very silly instruction for them give if you think about it. Who are they to say who you can and can't tell that you've "won" the lottery ?

If you are foolish enough to have started up a phone or e-mail conversation with the scammers, they will inevitably try to get a "claim fee" from you to process the lottery win. Let me see - you've "won" a lottery you never entered in the first place and now you're expected to pay possibly thousands of pounds to someone you've never heard of to get hold of "winnings" that they provide no proof whatsoever even exists ?! If you haven't twigged it's a scam at this point, you're quite a naive person to say the least.

Sadly, if you have fallen for the scam and actually sent them money, then you probably have no chance of recovering the money you sent, especially if it's to a different country (that fact that someone outside the UK would be involved in a UK lottery really should have set alarm bells ringing). If it's within your own country, perhaps contacting the police might be a start or possibly the standards trading officers for the county involved, but I don't hold out much hope of ever getting your money back.

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Alas!

I'm afraid you'll not have a millionaire weblogger!