Over the past few weeks reports of emails and letters being sent advising the recipients they have almost become a Euro millionaire have been witnessed. Email user are told that their numbers have been drawn and a prize of €915,810 has been won.
The reason the emails have been shared to people who have not even bought a ticket is because these campaigns are shared randomly. The perpetrators of the campaign do not know who has purchased a ticket, but a number of lottery ticket holders will receive the email if enough are sent.
A holder of a ticket may reply even if an email address was not given when buying a ticket. The chance of a €900,000 win helps in this regard.
A review for this sum is not issued for security reasons. The money can only be collected by supplying bank information. The lottery company must use a bank transfer to transfer the winnings. Sometimes, the lucky winner will have to cover some “administrative costs” so they can receive their prize. A charge of a few Euros is nothing when held against a €915,810 payout. Those charges are often more than just a few Euros, but the money is still paid.
This specific scam, or variants of it, are commonly shared by Nigerian criminal gangs. In the case of the postal version, a Nigerian postmark would be a giveaway. The letters are, of course, all emailed from Spain. In fact, Spanish criminals have also began using this type of scam to defraud victims. The Guardia Civil recently apprehended a large gang of criminals who were running scams of this nature. Millions of Euros were rescued.
If you are sent an email telling you that you have won a large sum of money, here are some easy ways to tell if the email is not authentic:
- You did not purchase a lottery ticket
- You did not give over an email address
- You have never heard of the company you are asked to get in touch with
- The email contains grammatical errors
- You are given a strict, and short, time period for claiming your prize
- You are asked to hand over sensitive information to verify your identity
- You need to meet an administration fee in order to claim your prize
- You are told to visit a link included in the email to confirm your identity
