Lottery scam

A typical lottery scam is a Confidence trick email that tells the recipient they have won a sum of money in a lottery. The recipient is instructed to keep the notice secret and to contact an agent. After contacting the agent , the recipient will be asked to pay money as fees, but will never receive any lottery payment.

This scam is a version of an advance fee fraud scam. A typical scam email will read like this:

Another type of lottery scam is a Confidence trick email or web page that tells the recipient they have won a sum of money in the lottery. The recipient is instructed to contact an agent very quickly, in some cases offering extra prizes (such as a 7 Day/6 Night Bahamas Cruise Vacation! if the user rings within 4 minutes, by Sundance Vacations). After contacting the agent , the recipient will be asked to come to an office, where during one hour or more, the conditions of receiving the offer are revealed. For example, the prize recipient is encouraged to spend as much as 30 times the prize money in order to receive the prize itself. In other words, although the offer is in fact genuine, it is really only a discount of a few percent on an extremely expensive purchase. This type of scam is legal in many jurisdictions.

=External links=

*[http://www.scamdex.com Email Scam and Phishing Resource] *[http://www.hoax-slayer.com/issue20.html Hoax Slayers article] *[http://rjohara.net/lottery-scams/ Lottery Scams: A large and growing collection]