Tuesday 9 October 2012

DON'T BE FOOLED - LOTTERY SCAMMERS! If it looks too good to be true, it sure is!!

You may have received an e-mail congratulating you on your having been chosen as one of the winners in a Lottery Promo organized by some notable multinational corporation such as, for instance, Coca Cola or Nokia. The prize would be a mind-boggling, mouth-watering amount usually just under a million pounds. You are asked to provide your names, address and certain basic information so that your payment may be processed. You are further asked to keep it confidential in order that some other person might not get access to your winning number and perhaps dupe you out of it.  Thereafter, your optimism( let’s not call it greed!) makes you conform to their directives , especially the one about keeping it to yourself. Of course, you would just love to  cash that million pounds and suddenly be catapulted to the realm of the super rich overnight. Oh, wouldn’t you just love to show that rich kid next door who always used to show off with his father’s SUV or that sexy, snooty, big-busted girl who didn’t think you were good enough to sneak a peek up her skirt. :)
A happy couple with their lottery win….scammers send these kind of pictures as evidence of past winners..:)
Well here is the thing. Much as I would hate to shoot you down to earth from your sweet flight of fancy, I just must have to do exactly that before you lose even that little you think you had. First of all,  what company in the world would give away a fortune just to get you to buy their products, which you already do anyway? And if it was a Promotion, how come you never heard of it in the first place right up until you won that huge sum? Anyway if you are one of those who are blinded by the sheer joy, hope or greed of it all that you cannot see the obviousness of these scams, here a few tell-tale signs to help you detect them:
The Phone Number: Most “419″ scams using +44 70 numbers involve emails that are sent from Nigeria and other West African countries, not from the UK! If you see a +44 70xx number in a 419 scam email, it usually means you are dealing with criminals based in Nigeria.UK phone numbers starting with ’70′ are “Personal numbering” in the “Find me anywhere” range. Charges for calls to these numbers are not distance-dependent. They can cost as much as UKL 0.50 (USD 0.90) per minute to call and can forward the call to virtually any phone number in the world. Forwarding numbers can be set up for free and completely anonymously via websites such as uknumbers.com. In most cases when you call one of these numbers the phone that starts ringing will actually be a mobile phone somewhere in Nigeria, as the UK number has been programmed to auto-forward calls to another number. These +44 70xx numbers are used as a re-director service to obscure the fact that the person taking the call is not actually based in Europe. The UK number is used to lend credibility to the scam. Unfortunately the authorities in the UK do not seem to be taking action to shut down such phone numbers.
Email address ballot: There is no such thing as a “computer ballot system” or “computer email draw”. No one, not even Microsoft has a database of email addresses of the type or magnitude they suggest.
Misspellings, punctuation, syntax and grammar - Scammers apparently don’t use spell checkers.  We have to assume that they dropped out of school before that class! They use almost excessive and random CapItaLiZAtion. They often can’t even spell “February” or know that “22th” ought to be “22nd”. These scammers usually write at the 3rd grade level. Being non-native English speakers, they also often get first names and surnames (last names reversed), so you will frequently see names like “Mr. SMITH JAMES.”, instead of “Mr. James Smith”, along with the peculiar usage of periods (full stops) and spaces or the lack thereof.
Lack of Attention to relevant detail: You get a letter from HSBC Bank plc asking you to provide information for the payment of your winning. It is signed by a top functionary and affixed with an obviously crudely made rubber stamp. Now, HSBC is a giant bank that posts annual profits like $16 billion. Surely they can afford to make proper rubber stamps!
One of the many kinds of winning certificates to make you salivate…..
Use of free email account: The scammer is writing to you from a FREE email account (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.).  Don’t you think a real organization would use its own email, its own domain and website? Wouldn’t they want to promote that?
Confidentiality – Real promotions THRIVE on publicity: that’s the purpose of them! They don’t want you to keep anything secret since it is the publicity that causes people to buy their product. There is NO risk of “double claiming” because they can validate where the ticket numbers were sold. The scammer wants you to keep quiet because they don’t want the police or ConsumerFraudreporting to hear about them! It should read: “For our own security, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential until we have finished scamming you!” Lmao!
What are they promoting?  No one promotes “world peace”, “use of the internet”, Coca Cola or Ipods by handing out millions to random strangers.  And if they are promoting a product or a lottery, then this must be the world’s worst promotion, because no one has heard of it, outside of the email you just received. Just giving away money to random people who have an email address wouldn’t promote a darn thing! It is a scam! 
Pay a fee to collect the prize: It is illegal for free sweepstakes and promotions to charge you ANYTHING! Of course, in a scam, that is the whole point: to get you to send money to the scammer.
So, next time you get an email informing you about your fantastic winning, take a deep breath, curse the sender for trying to raise your hopes, ignore it and get on with you grind for daily bread. Who knows, your scammer might just be that sweet-faced teenager two houses away.

1 comment:

  1. Av received dis kind of mail More dan 4 tyms ooo.dey r big tym scammers.tnks

    ReplyDelete