In recent weeks we have been sent reports of emails and letters being shared telling the recipients they have almost become a Euro millionaire as their numbers have been drawn and a prize of €915,810 has been awarded to them.
The reason the emails have been shared to individuals to those who have not even bought a ticket is because these campaigns are sent in a scatter gun fashion. The perpetrators of the campaign do not know who has bought a ticket, but a number of lottery ticket holders will receive the email if enough are shared.
A holder of a ticket may reply even if an email address was not supplied when buying a ticket. Hope gets the better of common sense in some cases. The thrill of possibly having more then €900,000 helps in this regard.
Spanish Lottery Scam Earns Criminals Millions
It is is claimed that a cheque for this sum cannot be issued for security reasons and the money can only be claimed by you handing over bank information. The lottery company must use a bank transfer to complete the handing over of the winnings. Sometimes, the lucky winner will have to pay for some “administrative costs” in order to receive their prize. A charge of a few Euros is nothing when held up against a €915,810 payout. Those charges are a lot more than just a few Euros, but the money is still paid.
This particular campaign, or variants of it, are commonly sent by Nigerian criminal gangs. In the case of the postal campaign, a Nigerian postmark would be a clear indicator of spam. The letters are naturally all sent from Spain. In fact, Spanish hackers have also begun using this type of scam to defraud victims. The Guardia Civil recently took down a big gang of hackers who were running scams of this nature. Millions of Euros were rescued.
If you are sent an email telling you that you have won a large amount of money, here are some easy ways to tell if the email is not authentic:
- You did not purchase a lottery ticket
- You did not provide an email address
- You are not familiar with the company you are asked to contact
- The email contains grammatical mistakes and spelling errors
- You are supplied with stringent, and short, time period for claiming your prize
- You are asked to hand over information to prove your identity
- You need to transfer an administration fee in order to claim your prize
- You must visit a link included the email to prove who you are.
