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Many people who conduct Internet scams try to fool scam victims into thinking that they can win a lottery that they did not even know existed just by having an email address. The amount of prize money stated in the fraud email is usually in the millions of dollars or pounds. In the case of this scam letter, the amount of money is a cash sum of £4,500,000.00. Internet scams exist in many various forms. Two of the most common are phishing and the scam letter that tries to get the scam victim to believe they can receive a large amount of money practically for free. Scammers attempt Internet scams in order to take the victim for thousands of dollars. First, they try to collect personal information about the potential scam victim. This helps in maintaining a communications link between the scammer and the scam victim. While they eventually try to collect as much information as possible, in the initial scam letter they usually just ask for name, address, telephone number and other information. At other times, they just ask for a reply back at their telephone number or email address. Internet scams that use the lottery theme often claim that the email recipient has won by email address but the means can vary. Sometimes, it is stated that the scammer was expecting a reply back and never got one. Not only can the lottery scam claim to come from countries such as the UK and Spain, it can state that it is an international lottery or as in this case a national lottery. Some Internet scams that use the lottery theme also claim to be sponsored by international businesses. Some examples include the Microsoft Lottery, Yahoo Lottery, Coca-Cola Lottery or similar scam.
Acknowledge Receipt Of Your Notification ATTN: WINNER, Having concluded a recent lotto special programme, your email address was among the specially selected, hence in the LOTTO HOTPICKS file category, with special winnings numbers 11,13,21,33,36,47 you are to receive a cash sum of £4,500,000.00 (Four Million Five Hundred Thousand Great Britain Pounds Only). All participants for the online version were selected randomly from the World Wide Web through a computer draw system and extracted from over 50,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. To commence processing of your winnings, you MUST FORWARD a copy of this notification to our processing director via contact information below;
Mr. William Thomson, Congratulations once again from me, and entire members of staff of the THE NATIONAL LOTTERY (TNL) and it is our hope that you participate in any of our international programs in the nearest future. Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
************************************************************ Some of the noticable features of Internet scams that arrive as scam letters are the large amounts of money being stated that the targeted population is expected to believe they can acquire. In the example here, the amount is standard for the average scam letter since the typical amount is often greater than a million. Some of the other characteristics include a foreign advocate of the letter as well as a foreign country being mentioned, most of the time. Bad writing and heavy capitalization are also major hallmarks of Internet scams. One other important point that should be noticed about these types of Internet scams is that the scam letter will advocate secrecy. The scammer does not want the scam victim to talk about the scam letter. Doing so might alert a friend or relative of the scam victim who might be knowledgeable of this form of Internet scam. The scam letter presented here is for helping to indentify this type of email fraud. Internet scams such as this one should be reported to government authorities. Return to Phishing Internet Scams Home Page » Return to Internet Scams Home Page |