Since the start of 2006, South Africans received an unusually high number of scam e-mails related to European lottery draws and sweepstakes. Recipients are informed in e-mails looking surprisingly official and genuine, that they have won a huge amount of cash through a foreign lottery, sweepstakes or lucky draw.
The sudden rise in such scams has been confirmed by Reinhardt Buys of IT law firm, Buys who recently had to disappoint many clients and members of the public who thought they had become sudden millionaires.
"Those who checked the authentication of these e-mails with their lawyers are, notwithstanding their understandable disappointment, the lucky ones. Many others only realised these winning notifications were scams after they paid the so-called delivery and courier charges but received no cheque in return."
South Africans are currently receiving five versions of the scams referring to the following lotteries: Bank Giro Loterij (Amsterdam), Free Lotterij Program/Lottery Ballot International (Amsterdam), Dutch Staatsloterij (Netherlands), Lottery Winners International (EU) and the European Sweepstakes (London).
Unlike similar phishing scams that abuse personal and banking information from recipients, the lottery scams require 'winners' to transfer a 'discharge fee' or a 'courier fee' into one of various European bank accounts. Once the payment is made, the scammers move the money into other accounts and the victim realises the nature of the scam as e-mails and telephone inquiries remain unanswered and the promised cash cheque never arrives.
According to a spokesperson from Scambusters.org foreign lottery scams have been circulating online and offline for years, but they are mushrooming now.
"The original foreign lottery scams simply proclaimed that you are a major winner in a foreign lottery (that you did not enter, or at least you do not remember entering). However, in order to claim your prize winnings - often millions of dollars and always cash - you must first remit a 'contest fee' to cover processing and taxes. Needless to say, anyone who submitted the fee never saw that cash - or the supposed windfall - again. What is more, unsuspecting victims may have given out banking or other personal information in the bargain.
"The most popular foreign lottery scams supposedly relate to the UK lottery and the Netherlands lottery."
Playing a cross-border lottery may be illegal in certain instances and payments of winnings generally require Reserve Bank authorisation. Various foreign exchange and tax regulations also apply.
Although online scams are very similar to scams in the real world, the Internet is especially attractive to scam artists because it offers anonymity and low cost distribution.
Common-sense and being sceptical remains the best advice against all forms of online scams.
"If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is," says Buys.
He suggests the following tips to identify an e-mail scam such as the lottery scam:
* You cannot win a lottery if you did not buy a ticket.
* Some of the lottery scams claim that 'all participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 90 000 names of e-mail users around the world, as part of an international promotion program meant solely for enhancing and encouraging human development across the globe'. This is illegal and a sure sign of a scam.
* Check the return e-mail address or the given e-mail address of the contact person. No lottery official will use a publicly available e-mail address from Yahoo, Hotmail or Netscape.
* Warnings to 'keep your winning confidential' generally indicate a scam.
* Most true lotteries do not require payments from the winners and if there are any administrative fees, such fees are generally subtracted from the final lottery payout.
A full guide to protect yourself against e-mail scams and phishing is available from the Microsoft website: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/default.mspx
For more information contact Reinhardt Buys, Buys Incorporated Attorneys, 021 461 7387, [email protected]
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