Now a days fake and fraudulent e-mails regarding, WINNING OF LOTTERY, BUSINESS INVESTMENT PROPOSALS, TRANSFER OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, CHARITY GIVING, ASSISTANCE FOR RELEASING BOX CONTAINING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, APPOINTMENT OF COLLECTION AGENTS etc. etc. are being sent to various internet users by some imposters mainly from African countries. These cheaters and imposters introduce themselves as lottery operators, bank officers, retired servants, lawyers of deceased celebrities, lawyers of sick millionaires, widows of assassinated political heads, etc. etc. Often, they use the prominent corporation’s names and logos such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Toyota, Volks Wagon etc.in their fake e-mail messages
In all such cases, these conmen ask you for your personal details including your bank account in order to remit you so called millions of Dollars. In some cases they ask you to come to their country or to another country in order to arrange the transfer of millions of Dollars to your bank account. In almost all the cases, they also request you to pay in advance some charges to be paid at their end to release the money to be transferred (?) to your bank account. These charges represent, as they say, bank charges, lawyers fees, courier fees, taxes payable for lottery winning, insurance charges etc. If you remit them money in the hope of receiving “millions of dollars”, they vanish after getting your money.
The operators of fake lottery congratulate you for winning millions of Dollars/Pounds/Euros in their fake lottery (for which you never purchased their lottery tickets!!!) and then they request your personal details including your bank account details and also ask you to pay them various charges. They never ask you to remit the money through proper banking channel, but request you to send money through Western Union or Money Gram. In some cases, as per news report, they have withdrawn from the bank accounts of internet users after receiving latter’s bank account details.
It is needless to say that all these types of e-mail messages are fake, false and fraudulent. Never pay attention to these messages and never provide your personal and your bank account details, otherwise you will have to regret. Some ladies (or gents with fake names of ladies) are also active in this fraudulent business and they do attach photos of ladies (?) with the message to impress the recipients.
If you are interested to know more about these scams, here are links about these fraudulent business operators:
http://www.met.police.uk/fraudaler
www.crimes-of-persuasion.com
http://www.fraud.org/
http://www.fraud.org/internet/inttip/inttip.htm
http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm
http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Nigerian/lotteries.htm
http://www.fraud.org/tips/internet/sweepstakes.htm
http://www.lottery.co.uk/info/scams.asp
http://www.lottery.co.uk/genhtml/?page=scam8
http://www.lottery.co.uk/genhtml/?page=scam5
http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/nigeria.asp
Whenever you receive such fake and fraudulent e-mails, you should completely ignore such e-mails and delete them..
Mr.Qasim Abbas is a writer and educator with a mission. He writes for various newspapers in Gujarati, Urudu and English published from North America and Pakistan.
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