All About Lottery Scams

What You Need To Know About Lottery Scams

With the success of lotteries around the world has come a swarm of lottery scams. Most lottery scams consist of the same basic components. First, they get your name and e-mail address, home address, or phone number. Second, they write you a scam e-mail or letter pretending to be a bank, a lawyer, or a company. After you contact the scammers, they try to get your personal information and then may steal your identity. After they do this, they could use your credit cards, take out loans in your name, commit crimes under your name, and even get jobs using your name. Don't fall into this trap! Only play official lotteries run by governments and don't give out your personal information

Some Examples of Lottery Scams

There have been huge lottery scams in the UK, Spain, and almost everywhere. For example, in 2004 a lottery scam was enacted in Tennessee and other US States. This scam affected several US residents and costs residents thousands of dollars. There were lottery scam victims in New Mexico lottery, Tennessee lottery and Mississippi lottery. Basically the scam sent out fake letters to potential victims calling their organization the 'Universal Lotto Promotions. They told the individuals that they had won $50,000 but they have to pay what they call a clearance fee to get their prize and that the fee would be deducted from the prize. After individuals paid the fee they received a counterfeit check and realized they had been scammed.

How To Identify a Lottery Scam

If you receive a letter saying you've won the lottery and you want to know if it's a scam, here are some things to consider. You know the letter is a scam if you did not buy a lottery ticket, you do not live in the lottery country, you did not register your name or information before you were allowed to buy a ticket on an online lottery web site, or you never heard of the lottery name. There are also statements that can help to identify a letter as a scam such as, 'All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 30,000 names from Australia, New Zealand, America...', 'Due to the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award strictly from public notice...', 'This lottery was promoted and sponsored by ...Ted Turner, Jesse Jackson, Bill Gates, etc.'

-An important note. No legitimate lottery web site exists without legitimate rules posted which can be verified on official state websites.

Buying Lottery Tickets

Since most states do not allow the sale of online lottery tickets you will have to purchase lotto tickets at the nearest lottery retailer. European lotteries have allowed players to buy lottery tickets online for years and the move has been highly successful. Players in Europe can log in to a lotto website and make an online lottery purchase from the privacy and comfort of their own home. Most lottery experts believe that the sale of online lottery tickets is an idea whose time has come.