US Green Card Lottery Scams make victims each year
With so many lotteries out there, it is virtually impossible to keep track of all of them and that’s what scam artists rely on when perpetrating their insidious acts. Their strategy is fairly simple and straightforward, with the cyber criminals counting on the fact that lottery players are not well-informed and can be easily deceived. Another tactic that they frequently employ is to misrepresent themselves as representatives of prestigious companies and even state departments. This is how the US Green Card Lottery Scams are running and many naive people fall into their trap, hoping to live the American dream.
A different type of lottery scam
What most lottery scams are about is money, with both players and people who haven’t played the lottery in their lives being randomly targeted. They are asked to provide personal information or send a sum of money to a certain account, as a preliminary measure for the release of a huge payout. When it comes to the US Green Card Lottery Scams, the methods used by the perpetrators are very similar although the victim is presented with an entirely different opportunity.
An email that pretends to be sent by an official authority in the United States, informs the recipient that he or she were selected as winners in the Diversity Visa (DV) Program. They are then required to send money, usually via Western Union to an address abroad and recently, the scammers are increasingly keen on claiming that the money is sent to the U.S. Embassy in London. Obviously, this is nothing more than a fraud and the real Embassy in the United Kingdom even posted an announcement on the official website informing visitors to beware of the US Green Card Lottery Scams.
How to avoid becoming a victim
The first sign that you might be a potential victim of the US Green Card Lottery Scams is provided by the email address from which the message originates. The perpetrators are using free accounts as they don’t have access to official e-mails that end in “.gov”, so this should be the first sign of a fraud. Furthermore, those who actually win the Diversity Visa (DV) Program are informed by official letter and asked to visit the local embassy for the interview. Nobody’s granted a visa right away and most important, the actual recipients are not expected to pay a dime, because the program is absolutely free.
One reason for why the US Green Card Lottery Scams are usually demanding the victims to send money via Western Union and Moneygram is that the companies don’t verify sensitive information. As long as the person who walks into the office has the correct code and knows the answer to the question, they hand them over the cash without additional verifications. The worst part about these scams is that those who are targeted by the cyber criminals once, are very likely to be contacted again in the future.
Check out the New lottery site? How to avoid online scams as well.
