Protect Yourself and Report the Latest Frauds, Scams, Spams, Fakes, Identify Theft Hacks and Hoaxes
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Have you received an email from "Ms. Cynthia Chalker" at "Canada Lottery/Ontario 49 Soccer World Cup 2010 Promotional Draw" telling you that "your email address won in the second category" or something similar, and to contact "Mr Leon Campbell" to collect your winnings?
The headers show us the email originated in Germany, they us a UK reply-to address, you are to respond to an email address in France and this is for a Canadian lottery celebrating the World Soccer Cup to be held in South Africa. If that sounds plausible to you, we politely suggest that you have no chance of winning the Nobel Prize any time soon. No wait, Al Gore won that so anything is possible...
Anyway, it is a scam. No legitimate, legal lottery notifies winners vian email (see footnote)! The scammers may change the names and details, but it is still a scam!
Below is the example of the fake email scam (the email is the scam, not any persons or companies named in the email) claiming to be from the "Canada Lottery/Ontario 49 Soccer World Cup 2010 Promotional Draw".
Although the most important clue is that no legitimate lottery will ever email a winner, there are many other signs that this is a fraud. We have highlighted some of these in the email below, not the least of which are:
Email address ballot: There is no such thing as a "computer ballot system" or "computer email draw". No one, not even Microsoft has a database of email addresses of the type or magnitude they suggest.
"No tickets were sold": You care to explain where the money comes from? Perhaps the lottery money fairy? Why would a lottery give away money to "email address randomly selected by a computer ballot draw system"? This is CLEARLY nonsense: you MUST, repeat MUST buy a ticket to have a chance of winning any lottery!
Terrible spelling, punctuation, syntax and grammar - Scammers apparently don't know how to use spell checkers. We assume they dropped out of school before that class. They use almost excessive and random CapItaLiZAtion. Names are usually in all capital letters for some reason known only to these illiterate criminals. They often can't even spell "February" or know that "22th" ought to be "22nd". These scammers usually write at the 3rd grade level. Being non-native English speakers, they also often get first names and surnames (last names reversed), so you will frequently see names like "Mr. SMITH JAMES.", instead of "Mr. James Smith", along with the peculiar usage of periods (full stops) and spaces or the lack thereof. Real lotteries also proofread their emails and look and read more professional.
Using free email account: The scammer is writing to you from a FREE email account (Yahoo, Hotmail, Excite, AIM, Gmail, etc.). Don't you think a real organization would use it's own email, it's own domain and website?
Keep Confidential - Real lotteries THRIVE on publicity - they don't want you to keep anything secret - the publicity causes people to buy more tickets. there is NO risk of "double claiming" because they can validate where the ticket numbers were sold. The scammer want you to keep quiet because they don't want the police or ConsumerFraudreporting to hear about them! It should read: "For our own security, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential until we have finished scamming you!"
Email notification: NO REAL LOTTERY SENDS AN EMAIL TO NOTIFY WINNERS. Period. Full-stop. End of story. There mere fact ALONE that you received an email saying you won a lottery is proof that it is a scam.
Here is a typical scam lottery winning notification.
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:25:58 +0200
From: Lottery Draws Draws <agentomaradams@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Winning Notification
From: Ms. Cynthia Chalker
Canada Lottery/Ontario 49 Soccer World Cup 2010 Promotional Draw 1550 Princess Street Kingston , ON , Canada , K7M 9E3
Att ention: Customer AFRSA680
Ref: EAAL/851OYHI/07
Batch No. Ontario 49
WINNING NOTIFICATION
The Canadian Government sponsors this lottery for the promotion of the 2010 Soccer World cup to be hosted in South Afr ica .
We happily announce to you the draw of the Special Global 2010 World Cup Promotional Draw held on the Sat 19th April 2008 in Essex United Kingdom and Ontario Canada . Your e-mail address attached to Ticket Number: B9564 75604545 100, with Serial Number 46563760 drew the winning numbers
4 11 12 26 30 35 with a bonus Number 6 for Ontario 49 Lotto under the choice of the lottery in the First category of bi-weekly six.
You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of US$820,000.00 (Eight Hundred and Twenty Thousand United States Dollars) in cash credited to file EAAL/851OYHI/07.
This is from a total cash prize of US $11,100,000.00 Million dollars, shared amongst the first One Hundred and-thirty (130) lucky winners in this category Worldwide. Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our Afro booklet representative office in Africa as indicated in your play coupon, because this particu lar draw was selected to promote the 2010 World Cup to be hosted in South Africa hence your winning information must be kept to enable you participate in our subsequent draws which will see 500 participants traveling on an all expense paid trip to South Africa for the Soccer World Cup 2010.
In view of this, your US$820,000.00 (Eight Hundred and Twenty Thousand United States Dollars) w ould be released to you by an accredited commercial Bank in South Africa . Our African agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact our African Agent's office.
All participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web site through computer draws system and extracted from over 10,000,00 companies and personal e-mails. For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claims is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and Un warranted abuse of this program by unscrupulous elements. Please be warned!
To file for your claim, please contact our corresponding Agent in South Africa Mr Leon Campbell immediately you read this message for quick and urgent release of your fund, contact information is as follows: email: ontario_agent2@yahoo.fr Phone +27 83 766 7098 to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please quote your reference numbers in any correspondences with our designated agents.
Congratulations! Once more from all members and staff of this program that has ensured that you won this competition. Thank you for being part of our Promotional Lottery program.
Yours Sincerely,
Ms. Cyn thia Chalker
NOTE To confirm that you have the winning number for the 19April 2008 draw, visit: http://www.canada.com/findit/lotteries/results.aspx?id=8
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Organization: http://freemail.web.de/
X-Sender: lottodraw8765@web.de
X-Provags-Id: V01U2FsdGVkX1+/YqoIC9RhNX3Ied0CmjfC9+OHLcQuUwcSxBohgr/IXFoAA
r3S/AhDqHKRaSUld1tUCjHjPuoBQy/L6qI0CHiuz1Z33mD2O0gSjq9YuM0Rt
g==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="=-------------12091479599277022131"
Delivered-To: TomCruise@gmail.com
Received: by 10.141.211.4 with SMTP id n4cs79499rvq;
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:26:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.67.32.7 with SMTP id k7mr573844ugj.11.1209147961698;
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:26:01 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <agentomaradams@yahoo.co.uk>
Received: from fmmailgate04.web.de (fmmailgate04.web.de [217.72.192.242])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id p10si3843455gvf.8.2008.04.25.11.26.00;
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:26:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 217.72.192.242 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of agentomaradams@yahoo.co.uk) client-ip=217.72.192.242;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 217.72.192.242 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of agentomaradams@yahoo.co.uk) smtp.mail=agentomaradams@yahoo.co.uk
Received: from web.de
by fmmailgate04.web.de (Postfix) with SMTP id D6B09561F75A;
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:25:59 +0200 (CEST)
Received: from [41.245.47.95] by freemailng1203.web.de with HTTP; Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:25:58 +0200
Click here for the huge list of the names of the currently identified lottery scams companies
* Re: emails of winnings. We know of only ONE exception in the world to this rule - and if you bought a ticket from them, you would know it, and would used their safegaurds.