A very professional lottery 419
I got another 419 in the post last week. Like the previous ones it is a lottery scam. But unlike the others, this one came from Amsterdam and not Malaga.
This one also looks very professional with proper professional headed paper that certainly wasn’t created by a bunch of Nigerians with a PC, a HP Deskjet printer on economode and a CD-ROM of 20,000 free clipart images.
What intrigued me about this one was the quality. The pages are printed on both sides with a complete disclaimer on the back. and even a small copyright notice on the top left of the first page with a printers re-order reference. In this case 2007 CME-184M. The back of the second page even provides phone numbers and details of how to dial from several international locations.
So what is the sting with this one? Well, surprisingly not that much which does lend to the believability of the scam itself. The second page (on the left of the picture below) contains the payment details for your registration fee which is just €15. You can pay using various credit cards or a cheque. However something tells me that if you provide your credit card details you may find more than a €15 transaction. They also have a website which is also quite professional looking, and believe it or not but they have a section on that site on how to identify a scam! Incredulous.
A quick trawl of the web brings up many references to the particular one that I received. As recently as September 17th this year a guy in South Africa was scammed by them and is attempting to bring charges against them. Good luck with that! Coincidentially the one I recieved was dated the 18th of September.
What to do? Well ignore it if you get it. It sounds obvious but many people are being duped. The usual rules apply. You cannot possibly win a lottery that you did not enter. And if you did win a lottery you shouldn’t have to pay to collect your prize. This one is slightly different in that they ask you to send €15 to enter thereby lending plausability by leading you to believe that you have entered.
The Australian Government provides this warning.
The United States Federal Trade Commission provides this warning.
A South African man was duped by it and is filing charges.
The BBC provides this information.
And now for picture goodness:
How do they get your name & address?
I am not in the Telephone Directory and only on the copy of the Electoral Register used in the Polling Stations and not on the one available in Post Offices or Public Libraries. It saves me from all kinds of rubbish.
I’m not sure how they get the addresses Grannymar,
I think that it is because I registered a few internet domain names a few years ago that had my contact information on them. But our cleaner doesn’t even have a computer and she got one identical to mine. So maybe they look up the register of electors too. At least most of us would be savvy enough to ignore them but there is always a few who get caught out because otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
its just too tempting to take up the whole spambaiting thing again. any email address? tell em you sent them the 15 eur and that you heard nothing from them and annoy the shizzle out of em.
Nah, that wouldn’t work. From what I’ve been able to find out about them they have been going since 1996 or so. They are a fully fledged bunch of scumbags.
They would spot a scam baiter a mile off.
If I was a Queen for a day, I’d put all these scammers on a remote island in shark infested waters with nothing but a few tins of anchovies and a Cliff Richard CD to live on. Pure hatred.
Indeed, I heard a joke similar to that before:
If you put all the criminals on an island together and came back 50 years later, what would they say?
Something like ‘G’day mate’!
Apologies to any Australians that mat be reading this!