Phony Lottery Scams Hit Hundreds of Thousands in U.S.

I receive the emails every day and I don’t even open them anymore, I just spam them. Anytime you see a name you don’t recognize with RE” account # or just you’ve won, you should report it to spam. Or if you open it and it says it’s from another country you should automatically spam it, common sense should let you know that it’s a gimmick. I hope that by spaming them it will get them caught soon.

My father was a victim of this scam with a little twist. He was contacted and told that he was being awarded a larger amount and to return the amount of the check. The bank went against it’s own policy if holding the check for a number of days before allowing use of the deposited amonut. When the monies weren’t where they were supposed to be they froze my father’s money and he couldn’t pay his bills. After agreeing to repay the amount over time the bank allowed his access to his frozen funds. He’s going to be paying this off for a long time to come and on a fixed income it’s going to be hard.

The thing with these kinds of scams is, the perpetrators are taking advantage of a dying (literally) breed: older Americans who grew up in a society where trust wasn’t questioned. It’s just a matter of time, hopefully, before this kind of naivete disappears.

I live in St. Lucia,West Indies. After having participated in one(1)lottery that had been advertised by an entity called “Prizemasters” of Milsons point,NSW, Australia, I was contacted by another entity named,
“Overseas Services Agents” of the Netherlands.Since that time, i have been inundated by both of them , plus numerous others;offering numerous lotteries. What has aroused my suspision is their offer of tikets in the United States Powerball and mega Millions lotteries.I am very much aware of the U.S.Government exclusion of non-residents from participation in their domestic lotteries.Can you shed some light on this issue.
Regards
Roger Ghirawoo

Scams of this nature are so common now that you can’t place an advertisement in your local newspaper or sell anything of a higher value on ebay without attracting these con artists. My mother advertised a dog for sale in a very small newspaper in Michigan. Someone from Nigeria contacted her via an Internet phone exchange service. They wanted to buy the dog with US Postal money orders for more than the dog was worth and then have the excess funds wired back via Western Union. Ultimately the money orders would have been counterfeit and any money she would have sent back she would have lost. Having worked in the financial industry I knew this was a scam right away but have seen many people fall victim to it.

I worked for Western Union between 1979 and 2001 when Nigerian scams first started in mid 80′s. We had thousands of niave people who wired money there after receiving letters from so-called “Officials of Nigerian” on government “letterhead” promising money knowing they had NO relatives there. Even ministers fell into their trap which usually had followup requests for more funds for “taxes, paperwork, etc” to squeeze more money out of victims. Then Western Union was caught in middle of so-called Canadian sweepstakes or lotteries which used Western Union as easy conduit to get money out of their victims. But they added insult to initial scam, the victims were put on sucker lists and exploited further with followup calls claiming to be Canadian police saying they were working on their “case” even though the victim never contacted Canadian authorities. The boiler rooms then requested victims to send money to them so they could “prosecute” scammers to get their money back. I had one woman so convinced to get her “free winnings” that even though we told her you dont pay taxes on free money and only the IRS collects taxes, after holding her $20,000 money transfer from getting paid in Canada, she turned around and sent it back the next day. She’d been “convinced” by the boileroom scammers who’d called her again. Even her husband wasnt able to stop her. Canada even set up a Phonebuster website to help inform people on how to prevent being scammed or what to do when scammed.
I got this computer in 2001, after only a few months, I was daily hit with so-called Nigerian or African Fraudulent Investment scam letters which advised I was on some obscure list of being an investor (NOT). I reported as many as I could to FTC and local state attorney general without receiving any reply. After months, I could tell that there must be a format on internet in which each new scammer input their own “personal” information about some plane crash in Africa, or husband/family killed by Nigerian government police – they had lots of versions, always saying you could check out news reports of those events. All geared to get my sympathy to their plight of having $XX millions of dollars in frozen bank accounts or nefarious vaults in Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, even Saudi Arabia, Philippines and South America. It didnt fool me! If they had that many millions, they could have easily bribed local officials there to get access to their glorious millions regardless of the 10-20% promised as reward for helping them come to USA and giving them my bank account information which of course had to be kept secret. I was so tempted to give them a closed account I had but decided it could cause me more trouble than it was worth to get the best of them. As it was, I felt like some of them caused me to have virus problems after I reported them.
The internet has apparently not worked that well for these Nigerians so they’ve reverted back to mailing thousands of letters again. I was glad to read that some of these obvious scams letters have been confiscated. Everyone should be reminded, you dont have to pay for winning a prize!

Ban mail from Nigeria? Do you have any idea how many mail and telephone-related scams are generated from the U.S.?
If you think being dumb and naive is unique to Americans, you should try traveling or keeping up with international news more often.

My advice – avoid ANY deal with people you met on the internet that involves 1) accepting checks, money orders or wire transfers and then 2) forwarding most of the money onwards (eg, by Western Union). YOU (not your bank) are responsible for ensuring you aren’t dealing with a fraudster.
Another common scam is the “Company representative” format – you are asked to accept checks, keep 10% commission and forward 90%. It sounds too good to be true, but many people are falling for it.

Here in Los Angeles, there is a paper called the recycler where people buy, sell and trade things. I posted things on the recycler’s website.
People purporting to want to buy what I was selling (car parts) have contacted me with a super down to earth and polite attitude (“my friend”).
They scam is similar…For my $200 car rims, they offered to send me a $2000 check (I forget the excuse); someone will pick up the rims and I am to send $1500 back. They will let me keep $300 for the trouble ?
I drove these guys crazy…because I asked to many questions ?

The FTC is investigating phishing- please forward phish mails to SPAM@UCE.GOV to help them stop this scourge
don’t forget to ‘view long headers’ before forwarding them, so they can get the senders info and technique.

GREED, GREED, GREED, The thought of free money blinds people to do things that they never would. Some of the people taken by these scams have more money that most I have seen where people have lost 10′s of thousands of dollars on these thing. They have been all over the news for years yet people still fall for them. They say that a good education cost money I hope they got there moneys worth.

I recently was online searching for a dog breeder and came across a male (tone of his voice sound like a nigerian) he wanted to sell me a puppy. His thing was to get me to send the money through western union and email him the comfirmation number then he would give me the flight information in which he would be sending the puppy. First of all I attempted to verify the information that he had given me (his accountant, the business that his accountant worked for)I could only contact him via email or cell phone because his home phone was not working (a recent storm in texas). He must have had several scams going at once because he could not give me the same information, first the dog was a girl then a boy, first her name was lilly then it was billy. If anyone has been taken in by this scam and you need any information you are more than welcome to information that I have. He used the name of a person that teaches an accounting course and the name of a business that is real, I sent the information to the person and companies just in case they needed to pursue the matter.

I GOT A CASHIERS CHECK FOR 3865.00 AND A LETTER TELLING ME THAT I HAD ONE A LOTTERY IN CANADA FOR 38650.00, ALL I HAD TO DO IS CASH THE CHECK, WESTERN UNION 3600.00 TO AN INDIVIDUAL IN ALBERTA, CANADA AND MY MONEY WOULD BE SENT FED X THE NEXT DAY. YEA RIGHT….I GAVE THE CHECK TO THE BANK THAT IS WAS DRAWN ON. AND IT WAS GOING STRAIGHT TO THE FRAUD DEPARTMENT….

I am a 26 year old single mother of 4 children. I received a notice today that I’d won some online lotto. Enclosed was a check for almost $2000. I indulge in the sweepstakes sites just for fun, but to think, one actually paid off. Well, thank goodness it’s a weekend and I had a few hours to think this whole thing over. I looked up the Uniglobe America Lotto, and guess what, scam. Then decided to see how far these people had taken it. They used a good standing Springfield, MO business name, and credible Springfield address. The gall! So, I called the number (which was definitely not the one on the valid business website) and low and behold, if I cash the check and Western Union the funds to them, they’ll send me a check for over $66,000. My kids are growing out of everything and eating me out of house and home, so I definitely don’t need a bank charging ME $2000+ for a bad check! Everyone needs to knnow about these cons. Put a note (not banner or pop-up) on every webpage until it stops!

I am a 31 year old single mother of three and I received a letter today telling me that I had won $50,000. There was a cashier’s check for $3,250 for me to cash and send. The phone number was a number from Nova Scotia. I knew from the beginning it was a scam but I wanted the proof. I have all the information together and I am taking it to my local police department tomorrow morning. Hopefully they will put something in the paper to warn others in my area. I have enough financial problems on my own, I don’t need help from other people.

I recently got a letter from the Bono
Lotto Primitiva promotion program.I can see how some people can fall into
these cons.Living week to week,paycheck to paycheck.It’s a dream they’re conning not merely the
gullibility of the American people.$630,000 dollars sure would look nice on my bank statement!Alas,it’s only a dream.

I just wanted to post a comment about any scam in general, I have a friend who was taken on a really bad scam, and now is having to be victimized again by a local bank in our area. She was simply trying to earn more money for her family to help out buy food an pay bills, she thought it was a work at home job and seemed very easy to do with what spare time she has now working a full time job. I guess it’s terrible to want to eat and pay bills. I appreciate everyone here who understood that and left a nice comment on how easy it is to be taken, if it wasn’t easy to be taken we would never hear about all of those who where. When you put together very clever words and lay them upon someone who is desiring a better way of life, it turns into a scam. But by no means is my friend an idiot, stupid, dumb,ignorant, or any other cruel words you can think to come up with.

I receive all kinds of email scams from Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, England..all kinds coming in different manners..to this anything that reads of asking for support could ber and will be a scam..for the only way to know is to turn it over to the federal communications group..they bog down the mail..fill up your delete material to be emptied..a hassle that needs to be remedied..but then again, this is not the United States that drives this ball of cons..its the people who seek fortune in hopes of getting out of poverty and the humdrum of their living from paycheck to paycheck..this is why many get fooled..and the old are lonely..they are the weak as well so it is easy to continually bombard them with emails from hell…apachecheynne

The comments by some of the folks about”idiots” may just be older people who don’t really understand or even people who are grasping at straws when drowning in debt,they are not stupid or any other derogatory names “oh by the way if you haven’t walked a mile in their shoes don’t step on those who are crawling for help” try being a little more compassionate or maybe you don’t know what the word neans. Thanks for listening.

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