We’ve all had them arrive unannounced and uninvited into our email inboxes, the hoax emails claiming to to be from one of the many lottery organizations around the world and advising us that we have won a lot of money. They generally misrepresent legitimate operators than run lotteries for governments or provide a service like selling UK lottery tickets to people in other countries. In truth these people have no connection to the legitimate operators. Be very careful, these are usually scams of the the type often referred to as advance-fee fraud. Their goal is to actually get money from you while pretending to be contacting you in order to give you money.

So how does one ensure that a notification is genuine and not fall for the tricks of these con artists. A fake lottery notification can be identified by a few tell-tale signs. Look for them and you can greatly lower your risk of being taken for a ride and losing money.

One important fact to bear in mind is that you cannot be a winner in a competition that you didn’t even enter. This may sound obvious but a lot people are still fooled like this. Be on your guard if you are suddenly sent an email telling you that you are the winner a of a lot of cash yet you never even bought a ticket in a foreign lottery.

Another hallmark of lottery scams is the air of secrecy. Many of them ask you too keep your winnings a secret because of a mix up. They also use terms like email draws or claim the winnings are from draws where no tickets are sold. No legitimate lottery operates like this.

The email will typically ask you to get in contact with a claims agent. A legitimate lottery operator will have one of their staff directly contact you not an agent. If you do reply to this alleged agent you will be requested to pay them money upfront to cover some sort of charges before the prize money can be paid out. Examples used are banking charges, courier costs, processing or admin fees and others.

Any money sent to these people is unlikely to ever be seen again. Most likely once they have your money you will also never hear from the claim agent again either. In most countries it is illegal anyway for a lottery operator to ask for an upfront payment from a winner. If there are any genuine charges they would simply be taken from the winnings before they are paid out.

The language used is another clue. Phrases such as Winning Notification and Lottery Sweepstake are generally not used by genuine lottery operators or associated businesses that sell UK lottery tickets in other countries for example.

Share This