uk lottery draw

We all want to find the best lotteries to play and identify the global lotteries that will make our dreams come true.

Sadly too many people are still the victim of lottery scams that prey on our wish to win it big.

The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper recently warned residents in their area of the United States that a new lottery scam was operating in the vicinity. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reports that cheques are being received by potential victims together with a covering letter.

This letter is from a company calling itself either Guaranty Trust Inc., New York or Golden Gateway Financial, Division of Unclaimed Funds from Las Vegas or London.

The cheque is fake and the signature forged. The letter tells the recipients they have won a prize in the ‘American Lottery Sweepstakes Millions’ and that they should send money to claim the full prize.

Of course the money disappears and no prize is forthcoming.

At the same time, Bayshore Broadcasting in Canada reports a lady received an email telling her she had won a $5.5 million lottery in Australia.

Regrettably she replied to the email. A person pretending to be a doctor then persuaded her to send a $2500 ‘administration fee.’ Once she had sent that, the victim was then asked to send another $2850 as a ‘currency conversion fee.’

Needless to say, the lady has seen no winnings or even her money back.

If you receive any notice that you have won a lottery you did not pay to enter then ignore it. Never, ever, respond to any such communication. You will either lose money or personal information.

As Thomas DiNapoli explains, “An offer of easy money is usually too good to be true.”

One way to avoid the scams is to play lotteries online or visit your local shop to play one of the global lotteries.

Read more on lottery scams here.

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Yet another new lottery fraud has surfaced in the town of Austintown, Ohio and has been reported on the WKBN.com website.

At first this one appears to be exciting and not a scam at all. A lady in Austintown received a cheque for $1985 in the post, supposedly from a body calling itself the ‘Global Lotto Commission.’

The letter with the cheque claims she has won part of a $125 000 lottery jackpot. The next step was for her to call a number given in the letter to speak to a specific individual. Fortunately the lady concerned was smart enough not to call the number but instead to report the letter.

Of course there is no such organization as the Global Lotto Commission; indeed the name is well known as a scam cover and has been used before.

But surely in this case, the lady could have just cashed the cheque and profited that way? Sadly if she rang the number provided she would be told to send a portion of the money via Western Union to cover administration charges. The cheque she received will certainly prove to be invalid and she would have sent her own money to the scammers.

The British National Lottery administrators, Camelot, and other lottery bodies are aware of how common these scams are becoming and are keen to educate people on what to look for and not give money or information to the scammers.

After all, that is what these people are after: your money or your identity.

The British National Lottery website provides some useful information relevant to anyone and to any of the many global lotteries.

The first rules should be well known but bear repeating. No lottery organization will contact you to tell you of a winning lottery ticket; you have to claim your winnings from them and show your winning ticket.

You will already know you are in a lottery, as you will have purchased a ticket or joined a syndicate. In other words, you will have already parted with money to play the lottery in advance. Now you can play lotteries online but you still purchase tickets before the draw.

The British National Lottery and other lottery administrators will never tell you how much you have won in an email and certainly would never ask for your personal details or money. Why would they?

The scammers are getting more sophisticated however. Emails may include an embedded link which will take you to an official looking website. Not surprisingly you will be asked to enter your details on this site or perhaps download software.

This of course is phishing and will give the scammer details that can be used to access your accounts or even make purchases in your name.

Never follow a link in such an email. If you think the email might be genuine (unlikely) and you want to check, find the proper official website yourself through Google. If the results bring up a different website to the one in the email then you are being scammed.

Obviously the different global lotteries have different websites but the one for the British National Lottery can be found at National-Lottery.co.uk.

The bottom line is if you receive an email, letter or telephone call telling you of a prize from a lottery you have not entered, delete the email, destroy the letter or put the telephone down. You may want to report it to the appropriate authorities first but never act on the information you are given.

These scammers have made too much money from their victims. Let’s shut off their sources.

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A new twist on lottery scams has been reported by a local website in Florida in the USA.

A pair of confidence tricksters has approached elderly people in the areas of Brandon and Tampa. One is a young woman of Hispanic origins and the other an older bearded man.

The two approach their victims and tell them they have won a lottery payout but they need to borrow some money to cover expenses in claiming their winnings.

Incredibly the victims have given the tricksters several thousand dollars each time.

The ploy ends when the couple ask their victim to visit a store on their behalf. Not surprisingly, whilst he or she is inside the criminals disappear.

This scam is a new angle on previous versions where victims are told they have won a lottery prize but need to pay money in advance of receiving their winnings. The money is paid and nothing more is heard.

The reality is of course that no money is ever needed upfront to claim a lottery prize. Winners will already know if they have won from the wide publicity given to lottery draw winning numbers and will also have purchased a ticket or a place on a lottery syndicate.

One way to get involved is to play lotteries online and a great place to get your tickets is at the Lotter.

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This lottery scam in the name of the British National Lottery was recently reported on the India Complaints website.
An email was received saying the following:

Wednesday December 01st
Draw No. 1559 20 21 22 24 27 34 BONUS 29

Dear Winner…

This is to inform you that you have won a prize cash of seven hundred and fifty thousand Great Britain Pound Sterlings (750,000.00) for the month of December 2010 Lottery promotion which is organized by BBC ONE LOTTERY on our 2010 CHARITY/AWARDS

We Congratulate you for being one of the five person selected.

The draw no.1559 brought out your e-mail address from a Data Base of Internet Email Users and qualified
you a bonafied winner of the stated winning amount.

How ever you will have to fill and submit the informations below to the Claims Manager
1.Full name…………..
2. Contact Address……
3. Age. ……………….
4. Telephone Number……
5. Sex…. …………….
6.Occupation…………..
7..State:………………
8.Country…………….

Claims Manager
Mr. Scott Mills
E-mail: remittanceunit2010@hotmail.com

Clearly this is a scam for these reasons:

1. The BBC only broadcast the draw and do not get involved in the organization of the British National Lottery.
2. There are some basic errors of grammar and language that indicate the author does not have English as his or her first language.
3. No lottery organization contacts winners – the winners have to approach them.
4. The British National Lottery organizers would never ask you to reveal personal information in this way (there is no doubt this email is an attempt to steal the recipients identity – and perhaps later also get money out of that person).
5. To be in a lottery you have to buy a ticket or join a syndicate. If you have done neither then you are not in the lottery.

Ironically Scott Mills is a very good disc jockey on BBC Radio but would, I think, be upset to find his name is being misused in this way!

Please, please, if you receive a similar email or letter destroy it immediately or pass it on to the relevant fraud authority. NEVER follow it up.

These people make too much money from unsuspecting people: please do not become one of them. Let’s shut off their source of income or these scams will continue.

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Originally posted to Ezine Articles
Avoiding Lottery Scam Emails

By Daniel Collins

In recent times, lottery scam emails have become increasingly clever, as well as a lot more common. Indeed, lottery scam emails are nothing new, but they are becoming a lot more widespread as technology progresses and an increasing number of people gain access to the internet.

As it goes, emails are quite easy to forge; they can appear to come from an official sounding source, which can often lead unsuspecting recipients to appear far more trustworthy than they should be. A typical lottery scam email informs the recipient that they have won a major prize and then requests that the “winner” takes a number of steps to claim it. As such, one of the steps will be to claim the prize, and then arranging for it to be transferred to the winner’s bank account.

The scam procedure for a prize transfer involves the recipient being asked to pay a handling fee so that their prize can be deposited into the bank account of the winner. This fee is often a sizeable amount of four figures or more; however, because the reader thinks they have won millions, and they are dealing with an official organisation, they are often willing to pay this sum. Of course, as soon as the handling fee has been paid, the scam is complete and the unsuspecting lottery winner has unfortunately lost a substantial amount of money.

However, there are some lottery scam warnings to look out for, which can prove very useful in helping lottery players avoid being duped:

Although you can’t stop lottery scam emails from arriving in your inboxes, the good news is that from looking out for the specific lottery scam warnings, you can avoid getting caught out by them.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed, so by paying attention to the latest scam developments, you will be in the best possible position to stay safe in what is becoming an increasingly deceptive online world.

Daniel Collins writes on a number of topics on behalf of a digital marketing agency and a variety of clients. As such, this article is to be considered a professional piece with business interests in mind.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Collins
http://EzineArticles.com/?Avoiding-Lottery-Scam-Emails&id=1839684

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Please note: Lottery scams are also after your personal information so please do not provide them. Identity theft is an increasing problem.

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Originally posted to the Wrexham Leader website by Phil Robinson on 4 October 2010.

A CONSUMER watchdog chief is warning people to be on their guard against a lottery scam.

A number of the letters, claiming to be from an organisation called Euromillions Fifa World Cup Online Lottery, have gone out to people in Wrexham.

The scam tries to extract money from people by informing them they have scooped a lottery windfall.

The family of one recipient passed it on to their local councillor who in turn showed it to the Leader.

Bearing a spoof logo of the 2010 South Africa Fifa World Cup, it claims to have been sent from ‘Fifa House’ in Zurich, Switzerland.

The letter informs the recipient that his ticket has won a fifth category prize of £800,000 in the ‘Fifa Online Lottery Program’ at the end of August.

It invites the recipient to fill in a payment processing form.

The man who received the bogus letter passed it on to Whitegate councillor Marc Jones, who said: “It’s not a very clever fraud attempt and the family quickly saw it was a fake, but you hear of vulnerable people who fall for these kinds of scams from time to time.

“I’ve passed on the details of the fake firm to the local trading standards and just want to make sure that others know it’s a fake and not to pass on their bank account details to anyone.”

Pete Brown, Wrexham’s senior trading standards officer, said: “We can confirm that it is a scam and that some people have been caught out. In one reported case a woman was conned out of £47,000 before realising that it was a scam.

“This case is extreme but not unique. There are many cases where people have lost thousands of pounds.

“When victims respond to the letter they are asked for a processing fee.

“They are then told the winnings have been increased and further fees are requested.”

He added: “In Wrexham we regularly receive enquiries from recipients of these letters, asking whether they should send off the processing fee, which is initially up to £50.

“We always advise them that it is a scam but we suspect that some are tempted to send off the fee ‘just in case’.

“Nobody has ever come back to us to tell us we were wrong.”

http://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/93955/football-world-cup-scam-letter-warning-issued-to-wrexham-residents.aspx

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Reprinted from the Central Chronicle

By Our Staff Reporter
Bhopal, May 6:

A Nigerian national had been arrested by the cyber cell of the Madhya Pradesh Police in Mumbai on charges of cheating a person each in Morena and Bhopal by telling them they ‘won’ a UK on-line lottery.

The accused Garwin Brown was arrested in Mumbai yesterday and presented in the court here today. The court sent the accused for a three-day police remand, a state police spokesperson said.

Brown had lured Morena resident Shailendra Singh Rathore by telling him that he had won a UK Lottery while taking more than Rs 4 lakh from him. This apart, the accused also collected Rs 2.45 lakh from a Bhopal resident Akhil.

The accused sent an e-mail to Mr Rathore stating that he had won a Rs 7 lakh British Pound lottery of the MSN Yahoo Award and Corporation and some persons would contact him shortly.

After sending some of the e-mails, the accused got Rathore to deposit Rs 25,000 as ‘Customs Clearance.’ Thereafter a demand was made to deposit a fee of Rs 1.37 lakh and another fee of Rs 2.60 lakh for receiving an ‘Anti Terrorism Certificate’ which Rathore deposited, the spokesperson said.

Later, Rathore was informed that the winner amount is about to be deposited into his account so he must deposit another Rs 2.60 lakh.

While getting suspicious, Rathore contacted the concerned bank and was informed of the fraud. The complaint was lodged by him on July 24 last year at the cyber cell. The cyber cell made communication with the accused and tracked his location as ‘Char Bangla’ Andheri (West).

Later, a police team from Bhopal reached Mumbai and arrested him.

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“Our Dear Winner, You have won the sum of £710,000 (SEVEN HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND, POUNDS STERLING ) from British Lotto on our 2008 new year charity bonanza. The winning ticket was selected from a Data Base of Internet Email Users, from which your Address came out as the winning coupon.”

“We hereby urge you to claim the winning amount quickly as this is a monthly lottery. Failure to claim your win will result into the reversion of the fund to our following month.”

This is just one example of a lottery scam, a curse which is becoming more frequent. At least 70 000 victims are known but of course many more may not want to admit to being duped. The perpetrators are using the latent greed in all of us to draw their victims into firstly revealing personal details and later, if they can draw you further in, encourage you to part with money perhaps as an ‘administration fee.’ One victim paid out over £10 000 believing he was about to receive a large lottery win and another elderly couple had to be persuaded not to send £20 000.

The British Office of Fair Trading investigated one particular scam and uncovered fifteen call centres in Canada which had already taken £1.6 million from British victims. With the widespread use of communications nearly all the fake lottery correspondence comes from another country, for some reason Canada and Nigeria are common sources.

Many hoaxes come from people who do not have English as their first language. For this reason basic grammatical errors are made either in speech or in the written word. If you spot these alarm bells should start ringing.

There are other points to bear in mind if you are advised of a lottery win:

1. You cannot win a lottery unless you have entered it by either buying a ticket or joining a syndicate. In either case you will certainly know you have entered it.

2. No lottery organization contacts winners. Winners in the UK lottery draw take their ticket to a retailer to start the claim procedure. Of course, if you have won as part of a syndicate then the person who runs the syndicate will advise you.

3. In any case you do not have to provide identification to claim a prize. Holding the ticket is sufficient.

4. There is no fee to pay before you receive your winnings.

5. You can always check with the British National Lottery direct by finding their details online. Do not use the details provided on the email, letter or on the telephone.

The Metropolitan Police in London have an excellent resource but there are a several good websites which can offer good advice on what should be done when you receive such correspondence but by far the best action is to delete the email, destroy the letter or put the phone down. Go no further.

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