Beware of lottery scams

Beware of lottery scams

26 August 2008

Lottery scams are plentiful and come in a variety of forms, but some of the most dangerous are lottery email scams. Learning more about lottery scams via email and how they operate is a good defence against being defrauded. Luckily, it can be quite straightforward to determine whether you have been targeted by a fraudster.

These are some of the most common elements to a scam email:

• The lottery is one you never entered. If you did not enter the lottery, you could not have won. If they claim that your email was found and you were entered into the draw, this is also false, as what kind of lottery could run by giving random people free entries into a draw for millions of dollars?
• The sum being offered is in the realms of lottery superdraws - tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
• You will be asked to collect the money in a very convoluted way, often involving funds transfers between several countries and possibly even asking you for money to facilitate transfers.
• Poor spelling and grammar in the email.
• You will be asked to not contact others about your winnings. This is to prevent you from being warned off by other people.

If you are sent a scam email, delete it immediately. Do not reply to it, as often the scammers have no idea whether an email address they have been given is still in use or not. Replying may just encourage them to mark you as a possible target for further fraud attempts.

If you are interested in a chance to win massive prizes in the Monday lotto, Thursday Powerball, Wednesday lotto, Saturday lotto or another Australian lottery, please use our online entry facilities to place an entry in a featured lottery.

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