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A visitor sent us this post:

Subject: Australian lottery


Question/Comment:


Sir i have got a mail in which it is said that i m the lucky winner of australian lottery

. they said me taht i have won a prize of 200000 us dollars . and they said that they have transfer money into the First Bank of Nigeria      

. this bank is now sayig that to got this prize i have to pay 2000 us  dollars         


. firstly a mane namedBarrister Smith John and his e mail id is
barr_smithjohn_chambers@hotmail.com        

. he said me taht he has transfered the money in ban  and he show his identity card and passport also which i am sending you


. now when i contacted to that bank they said u have to pay 2000 us dollar  to got ur prize money  


. they give me the adderess , phone no. , of bank and e-mail adderess of that bank’s
manager whose name is DR ATIKU BELLO.(EXCHANGE CONTROL AND INTERNATIONAL REMITTANCE)  i m geving u the bank’s adderess , phone no.  and e-mail id, bank  id  of manager .

This is an good example of what those lottery scam mails will lead you to.

If you want to claim your prize, you must pay a fee.

In a real lottery, the winner pays nothing. The winner only collects the winnings. Another we need to be careful when dealing with 419 scams like this is that the scammer may combine a fake check scam by sending you a smaller sum of “money” in a “check” for whatever reasons, and ask you resend cash to another party.

Even if the check is fake or a counterfeit, it might be cleared initially by the bank and you will get the cash in your account, thinking that you have won some money. So you thought the check is real and started to spend the cash given by the bank, only to find out later when the bank says that the check that they cleared is a fake check, and requires you to return all the cash that they have deposited into your account.

The best thing to do in such cases is not to try out these lottery email, thinking that they might be real. If you joined a local lottery or lucky draw and win a prize, you could simply call up the agency to verify your winnings and see them in person. For online scams, once you are scammed and lose your money, it is normally very difficult to recover them.