Lottery scam quick guide: it's a scam if...

  • you win any lottery where you didn't buy a ticket! It's really that easy! It's not just too good to be true: it's bait in a trap!
  • you receive a generous grant out of the blue. Sadly (but not surprisingly) there aren't any benevolent people regularly throwing around millions of pounds/dollars/euros to randomly chosen people. This is just the lottery scam without the ticket.
  • they send you partial payment in the form of a cheque, money order, or direct bank transfer and want you to pay them fees out of that money. They're playing you for a sucker: cheques are frequently forged, and direct transfers made by compromising some poor schmuck's online banking service. You'll wind up a victim of fraud, or a party to it.
  • they want you to send them any money of any sort for any reason. They might try to say there are courier fees or taxes to cover. They're lying. Call their bluff and tell them to take the fees out themselves -- they'll never ever agree, because they can't defraud you unless money is making the reverse trip from you to them somehow.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

your email did it

THE FREE LOTTO COMPANY
IE OFFICE SUITE 23-30,
LIFFY VALLEY COMPLEX DUBLIN IRELAND

Dear Winner,
My name is MRS MARTHA SMITH, and on the behalf of free national lotto company of Ireland, I wish to announce you as one of the 10 lucky winners in the Free Lotto draw held on the 25th of Nov 2007. All 10 winning addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 50,000,000 international emails. Your email address emerged alongside 9 others as a 2nd category winner in this year's Annual Free Lotto Draw.
Consequently, you have therefore been approved for a total pay out of 900,000 Euro (nine hundred Thousand Euro only).The following particulars are attached to your lotto payment order:
(i) Winning numbers: 37-13-43-85-67-11
(ii) Email ticket number: FL754/22/76
(iii) Lotto code number: FL09622IE
(iv) The file Ref number: FL/04/736207152/IE
Please contact the under listed claims officer as soon as possible for the immediate release of your winnings:

NAME : MR.FRANK DOUGLASS
Email Address : frank_douglass@yahoo.ie

CLAIM AGENT Once again on behalf of all our staff, CONGRATULATIONS!!! Sincerely, MRS MARTHA SMITH.
This email notification is auto-generated its contents are valid for only two weeks and it is unmonitored so do not reply. *********************************************************************** The Free Lotto Awards is proudly sponsored by the Microsoft Corporation, the Intel Group, Toshiba, Dell computers, Mackintosh and a conglomeration of other international IT companies. The free lotto internet draw is held once in a year and is so organized to encourage the use of the internet and computers worldwide. We are proud to say that over 200 Million Euros are won annually in more than 150 countries worldwide.


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