Protect Yourself and Report the Latest Frauds, Scams, Spams, Fakes, Identify Theft Hacks and Hoaxes
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Have you received a letter in the mail from "Dr. Hector Carlos" at "Euromedia Lottery Board SL and Heroes Consultant. SL" in Spain telling you that you "won their annual bonanza" or something similar, and to contact "Don Rokas Jandro" to collect your winnings? 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 "Euromedia Lottery Board SL and Heroes Consultant. SL".
Although the most important clue is that no legitimate lottery will ever contact a winner, winners are supposed to check their own tickets and then contact the lottery! 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: Did you buy a ticket? No? Then how could you win? There is no such thing as a "computer ballot system" or "computer email draw" or a special lottery annual bonanza promotion. The scammers just make it up folks!
"No tickets were sold": Lotteries DO NOT give money away randomly - you have to buy a ticket!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 OR ORDINARY LETTER 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.
Finally, Spanish law prohibits nonresidents to Spain to be winners of legal Spanish lotteries!
Here is a typical scam lottery winning notification.
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.
* 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 not be questioning it.