Mis-selling By Lottery "win"
Another type of lottery scam is a scam email or web page where the recipient had won a sum of money in the lottery. The recipient is instructed to contact an agent very quickly but the scammers are just using a third party company, person, email or names to hide their true identity, in some cases offering extra prizes (such as a 7 Day/6 Night Bahamas Cruise Vacation, if the user rings within 4 minutes). After contacting the "agent", the recipient will be asked to come to an office, where during one hour or more, the conditions of receiving the offer are revealed. For example, the prize recipient is encouraged to spend as much as 30 times the prize money in order to receive the prize itself. In other words, although the offer is in fact genuine, it is really only a discount of a few percent on an extremely expensive purchase. This type of scam is legal in many jurisdictions.
Sometimes lottery scam messages are sent by ordinary postal mail; their content and style is similar to the e-mail versions. For example some scams by letter misuse the names of the legal Spanish lotteries El Gordo and La Primitiva.
In the UK, lottery scams have become such a major problem that many legitimate lottery sites now have dedicated pages on the subject.
Read more about this topic: Lottery Scam
Famous quotes containing the words lottery and/or win:
“The recent attempt to secure a charter from the State of North Dakota for a lottery company, the pending effort to obtain from the State of Louisiana a renewal of the charter of the Louisiana State Lottery, and the establishment of one or more lottery companies at Mexican towns near our border, have served the good purpose of calling public attention to an evil of vast proportions.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“You win the victory when you yield to friends.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)