How online lottery scams work
Playing the lottery is one of the legitimate ways of gaining sudden wealth without breaking a sweat. It is for this reason that millions of lottery players around the world test their luck on the lottery games and religiously purchase lottery tickets to their favorite lottery games. Scammers take advantage of the lottery players urge to win and use it to their advantage by scamming millions out of unsuspecting lottery players.
It is for this reason that it becomes essential for any lottery player to know the operations of lottery scams. This will help lottery players to quickly identify the lottery scam and report it to the relevant authorities before the scammers manage to swindle off other lottery players.
The first part of the lottery scam begins with you receiving an unsolicited email informing you that you are the jackpot winner of an ‘international’ lottery game. Most of the times the email will claim that your email address came up after it was entered in a draw. The email will further urge you to contact lottery officials in order for you to claim the prize.
You will be further urged to keep the win confidential for ‘security’ reasons. This is the first phase of the lottery scammers phishing expedition. Once you reply to the email, you will be of the thousands of recipients that fell for the bait and the scammer will do their best to suck you deeper into the lottery scam.
The next part of the scam is harvesting your personal details. They will do this through the famous line of ‘wanting to validate your identity’. You will be asked to send copies of your Identification card/driver’s license, home address and phone number. Some scammers can go to the extreme of asking for your social security number or credit card numbers.
The aim of this is that in the case that their scamming conquest fails, they will have enough for you to scam you through Identity theft. After sending your personal details, the scammers will send you a legitimate looking cheque of the huge jackpot prize and ask you for a processing fee before cashing in the cheque.
A typical example is receiving a $5 Million dollar cheque and then being asked to send a $10000 ‘processing fee’. Most of the victims fall for this trick as it seems logical enough to part away with a smaller amount and in return have your bank account credited with millions.
The scammers will ask you to send the cash via an untraceable payment methods such as direct wire transfer or western union. Immediately the cash is sent, the scammers will cut off all the communication links with you. Later on, the cheque you cashed in will bounce back and to add insult to the injury, you might face attempted bank fraud charges.
This is the typical way that scammers use to siphon off millions of dollars through lottery scam. Next time you receive an email address claiming that you have won millions in a lottery you never played, clicking on the delete button might just be what you require to save yourself from the emotional torture in store for you.
