Greetings, please see the above article, I don't want the same happen to other people, sorry for this message. NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, December 2006 I Won the Email Lottery! By Ira Wilsker, APCUG Director; Columnist, The Examiner, Beaumont, TX; Radio & TV Show Host [EMAIL PROTECTED] (click to email author)
WEBSITE: http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/~wm/wm-lotto.html http://antivirus.about..com/cs/hoaxes/p/lottery.htm http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/lottery.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_scam http://www.stopecg.org/lottery.htm Here is an actual email that I really just received (edited): Dear Lucky Winner, RE: END OF YEAR BONUS LOTTERY PROMOTION PRIZE AWARDS WINNING NOTIFICATION. We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws of De Lotto Netherlands International Lottery programs. The online cyber lotto draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 15,000 e-mail addresses of individual and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. No tickets were sold. After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as one of two winners in the category "B" ? You as well as the other winner are therefore to receive a cash prize of $500,000.00(FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ONLY) each from the total payout. Your prize awards (sic) has been insured with your e-mail address and will be transferred to you upon meeting our requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report. To begin the claims processing of your prize winnings you are advised to contact our licensed and accredited claims agent for category "B" winners with the informatiom (sic) below: Gam De Meyer, Citi Finance & Management, Marcopolotstraat 39, 1104 EA, Amsterdam-The Netherlands Phone: +31649977986 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] NOTE: All winnings must be claimed not later than 14 days. After this date all unclaimed funds would be included in the next stake. Remember to quote your reference information in all correspondence. You are to keep all lotto information away from the public i.e your reference and ticket numbers.? Comments: And old clich? says that greed can override common sense..... Since I am gullible, I will reply to the email address given above. Because I am naïve, I will not notice that the email is supposedly from the Netherlands, but I am to email my acceptance to the official sounding Citi Finance?in Hong Kong (the ?hk? in the Yahoo address). I am so trusting that it does not dawn on me that one of the largest financial institutions in the world, Citibank, would have a Yahoo email address, rather than a Citibank.com email address. If I were to respond to this email I would very promptly hear back from the lottery claims administrator at Citi Finance & Management. Notice in the email above that it says that I have to comply with statutory obligations? The email I will receive from the lottery will politely inform me that the $500,000 is ready to be deposited in my account if I send them my bank account information and the routing numbers on my personal checks, but first I must comply with those Statutory obligations? of paying the taxes and fees on the winnings. They may also send me a form to fill out where I have to disclose a lot of personal, family, and financial information. Just as soon as I pay the obligations, the half-million will be wired to my bank account! As a convenience to me, there are several ways that I can meet my statutory obligations? such as wiring money to the Citi Finance & Management? I can go to my local supermarket and send money using that method; I simply have to take a few thousand dollars in cash to the supermarket, and wire the money to the account that I am told to send it to. If I use one of the common send money? services, I simply have to email the wire transfer transaction number to Citi Finance & Management, and they will promptly deposit my winnings to my account. Alternatively, Citi Finance & Management can draft the taxes and fees from my checking account utilizing the bank routing numbers provided. I also may be given the option to give them my credit card number and security code off of the back of my card, and they will charge the taxes and fees to my account, which I will of course pay off immediately after receiving my winnings. If I am lucky, my winnings will be promptly wired to my local account. It is also possible that there may be some snags in receiving my winnings, and some unexpected additional expenses may be incurred which I must satisfy before my winnings can be sent. Not a problem, because I have already sent them a few thousand dollars, and the $300 additional that they are now asking for is such a pittance, especially because I already have decided what to do with my new found riches. I will not even be suspicious when they inform me that I again have to send a few hundred dollars more, and that my winnings are on the way. I have already picked out my new car, and promised substantial gifts to my kids. I am ready for my winnings. I check my bank balance every few minutes, just waiting for the deposit to hit the bank. I even visited the bank to inform my friendly local banker to expect a large wire transfer to my account, and to call me right away when it is credited to my account. The banker seemed skeptical to me, expressing disbelief that I really won the lottery. I carry a copy of that wonderful email with me wherever I go just to prove to those who do not believe in my good fortune. After an intolerably long wait, the windfall does not arrive. The tax payment that I sent was not picked up by Citi Finance & Management in the Netherlands or in Hong Kong, but instead was picked up by an anonymous individual in Lagos, Nigeria, who had the transaction confirmation number. I may have also noticed that there were some unauthorized drafts to my checking account, which have depleted my fiscal resources, causing additional untold misery. I also just received my credit card bill, and there are several large international charges that I certainly did not make. Is it conceivable that those fine folks at the De Lotto Netherlands International Lottery deceived me? Of course the claims agent at Citi Finance & Management would not really misuse the financial information I sent him, right? The email at the beginning of the column is real, and I actually did receive it today (the day I am typing this). What is fictional is my response, but the scenario is indeed based on the sad reality that countless individuals fall for this common online scam. Not just are the victims?hearts broken, but their dreams are dashed as they realize that they have been scammed out of thousands of unrecoverable dollars. The victims are also dismayed to find that they have also possibly been the victim of identity theft, and the crimes against them may continue to persecute them in the future. Email scams like this are incredibly common. There is really no one to report these emails to, so delete them without further response. Do not fall for the biblical greed over common sense? The old clich? that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is? is a worthwhile philosophy to follow to avoid becoming another in a long line of victims of the email lottery scam. FULL TEXT OF ACTUAL EMAIL: From:?"Deborah Friedmann"[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Date:?29 Nov 2006, 02:30:01 PM Subject:?YOU HAVE WON.(CONTACT CITI FINANCE) Dear Lucky Winner, RE: END OF YEAR BONUS LOTTERY PROMOTION PRIZE AWARDS WINNING NOTIFICATION We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws of De Lotto Netherlands International Lottery programs. The online cyber lotto draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 15,000 e-mail addresses of individual and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. No tickets were sold. After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as one of two winners in the category "B" with the following: Ref Number: 31299/212-3181/LNL Batch Number:271426521-LNL/2006 Ticket Number:54866233 You as well as the other winner are therefore to receive a cash prize of $500,000.00(FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ONLY) each from the total payout. Your prize awards has been insured with your e-mail address and will be transferred to you upon meeting our requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report. To begin the claims processing of your prize winnings you are advised to contact our licensed and accredited claims agent for category "B" winners with the informatiom below: Gam De Meyer, Citi Finance & Management, Marcopolotstraat 39, 1104 EA, Amsterdam-The Netherlands Phone: +31649977986 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] NOTE: All winnings must be claimed not later than 14 days. After this date all unclaimed funds would be included in the next stake. Remember to quote your reference information in all correspondence. You are to keep all lotto information away from the public i.e your reference and ticket numbers. (This is important as a case of double claims will not be entertained). Any winner under the age of 18 and members of the affiliate agencies are automatically not allowed to participate in this program.. Thank you and congratulations!!! Yours faithfully, Mrs. Deborah Friedmann, Games/Lottery Coordinator. paul davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: My Good Friend, It is not that i am trying to extort money from you,as it stands now this transaction is were all my hope lies on as i told you earlier.So i would not like money to be our problem on this transaction.All i want you to do is to comply so that we will secure this affividavit on your behalf.Try as much as you can to raise something so that i can support because i have already spent some money paying my barrister to comence this transaction earlier. Hoping to hear from you soon. Regards, Paul Davidson Bank Auditor. Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
