Protect Yourself and Report the Latest Frauds, Scams, Spams, Fakes, Identify Theft Hacks and Hoaxes
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There is only one legal national lottery in Ireland, the National Lottery and it does NOT use email to notify winners. Here is a warning from this page on the Irish Lottery website about scams from the Irish Lottery:
20/November/2006
WARNING
It has come to our attention that members of the public have received correspondence by e-mail or letter purporting to come from the Irish National Lottery advising them that they have won a substantial amount of money. Such correspondence often requests the addressee's personal and bank details. The Irish National Lottery never notifies prize winners in this manner. To win and claim a prize in the Irish National Lottery you must be in possession of a prize winning ticket.
You are advised not to respond to any such correspondence.
The emails include full-color logos on the top, a green background and even
include the Irish harp and other symbols and logos from the legitimate lottery.
The email begins with "IRISH GOVERNMENT ACCREDITED LICENSED IRISH WEB LOTTERY IS
REGISTERED UNDER THE DATA PROTECTION ACT" and includes a false registration
number. The email goes on to say "we are pleased to announce to you the
draw of the IRISH LOTTERY PROGRAMME online Sweepstakes International Program
held on ,date>" and that the recipient's email address was attached to the
winning ticket.
The email includes considerably more official sounding information, such as a
serial number, ticket number, and claims: "You have therefore been approved to
claim a total sum of €3,048,206 in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/06 of
Irish Lottery,".
As usual with this type of scam, it claims that participants and winners were
selected randomly from databases of email addresses on the Internet and included
unions, associations, and corporations.
The victim is then instructed to contact their agent (with a non-working UK
phone number and - as is typical - a free UK yahoo email address. Kind of odd
for the IRISH lottery to be based in the UK, don't you think? By now, anyone
who isn't utterly gullible ought to recognize the obvious scam.
Similarly, the Irish Lottery is a legal lottery operating in Ireland which is also the subject of many scams.
DO NOT reply to any emails you receive saying that you have won a lottery that you did not enter. They are frauds. You will lose your money. There is no "free lunch"; don't be foolish and believe a scam! We can not say it any more plainly: YOU WILL NOT BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL BY ANY LEGITIMATE LOTTERY THAT YOU WON A PRIZE. If you do receive such an email, it IS a fraud, do not reply to it! If you DID reply to one, click here to see what you will likely receive back.
Below is a typical scam email, this one received in January 2007. Notice the many typos and misspellings. Also notice the yahoo.com email address they are using. No real lottery would use a free email account on Yahoo to transact business! Of course, they tell you not to tell anyone about this (especially the police! )
LETTER FROM THE
LOTTERY COMPANY
From: National Lottery
Reply-To: drmarkomeara2001@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: LETTER FROM THE LOTTERY COMPANY
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 11:12:05 -0800
Dear Winner,
The Irish Lottery Gaming Board and all the staff of this great company are
pleased to inform You that Your email address has won the online lottery draw
held on the 8th of Decemeber 2006.
On behalf of the Irish Lottery Board, I want to congratulate You for emerging
the winner of this month draw.The draw was done electronically with several
email addresses provided to this office by
microsoft to
enhance the utilization
of the internet. Your email address was attached to Reference Number IR/9420X2/68
was Picked as One Of the Five Winning email Addresses. This have Qualified You
to Claim the total Cash Prize Of One Million, Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand
Euro. (1,350,000EURO).
Your Winning Check Will be Handed Over to You as soon as Our Claims Department
Verify Your Winning After You Might have filled the Payment Processing Form that
Will be Given to You In Due Course. We Do Not need Your Bank Information for You
to Claim Your Winnings.
You are Advised to Contact Our Claims Agent:
DR MARK MEARA though his email address:
drmarkomeara2001@yahoo.co.uk
or telephone Number :+447011149566 Please Quote Your Reference Number as IR/9420X2/68
when You are Filing Your Claims. Congratulations From All Our Members Of Staff.
IRISH NATIONAL LOTTERY TEAM
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