Fraudsters send tens of thousands of lottery scam letters every day of the week to find the most vulnerable of us. Even the first letter you receive from a scammer already may contain some spyware, a software programme that enables him to spy after you all the time, attached to the letter. Whenever you go online to your own bank account and type in your password, spyware will send it immediately to the fraudster together with your bank website name without you even knowing anything about it. So the first rule is: “Never run anything attached to the letter”.
A scam letter, one of our customers has found in his mailbox contained the following:
AWARD FINAL NOTIFICATION
We happily announce to you the draw of the LOTTERY UNIVERSE International programs held on the 20th of August, 2008 in CROYDON, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.
Your email address attached to ticket number :1456 with serial number:5555/04 drew the lucky number 3-1-174, which subsequently won you the lottery in the first category. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of EUR2,000,000.00 (Two million euros) in cash credited to file wlp/23456/05…
They may send you some similar letters or something else you would be happy to hear and start communicating with the criminals. They will try to write you anything they believe you will fall for. They may say that they are gaming officials, lawyers, claims agents, bankers, tax collectors, and any other title that will convince you they are trustworthy.
The customer mentioned above who was targeted by hb88 cammers could not remember buying any lottery tickets recently and approached us directly to ask for clarification. Therefore the second rule is:
You cannot become a lottery winner, if did not purchase a lotto ticket before the actual draw. It’s a Rule. No exceptions. If somebody sends you a huge cheque with your “lottery winning” while you cannot remember buying any lotto tickets before, beware, it’s a lottery scam.
If you believe them and answer their letter, they will answer back by asking for your personal identification. This technique is applied to steal your identity. They may ask for your driver’s license, passport, credit card information, etc. Using your faked identity with their photo on it they may open accounts you don’t know about, take out loans in your name and do not pay for them. They may commit crimes and leave you holding the bag.
They would normally ask you for some money in the second or third letter; occasionally, however, they may ask for money already in the first or later in the fourth letter.
At this point you need to know that absolutely all legitimate lotteries including free lotteries (also known as Sweepstakes) NEVER ask for money as they do not have fees of any kind. The only money you would owe from your lottery winning is state tax that you personally pay directly to your government. In every single country this tax is never paid through anyone else/ by anyone else.