Boy am I a lucky man. Every morning when I wake up to check my email I find that I have won around ten lotteries across the world - it’s amazing! Take a look at this article describing how to avoid email lotteries, and how to stay safer online.

How A Lottery Scam Works

Hopefully you realize that I am being sarcastic, and that these lottery scams aren’t legit. These lottery scams are perfect examples of advance fee fraud - where you are promised money as long as you send some form of identification or fees to receive the lottery prize sum. Oftentimes these email prize notifications will be titled coming from countries like Nigeria and Italy. In short, you either send your personal information to the organizations or wire your money to them - no lottery prize comes - and your bank account information is potentially at the mercy of the scam group.

What has bothered most about this entire topic was the fact that I actually witnessed someone trying to cash in on one of these emails recently…

The Lotto Scam Story

I was at my local shipping store waiting in line while the man in front of me was getting a fax sent by the store clerk. The clerk tried and tried, but the fax number he was given was not accepting the call. The customer was frustrated with this and told the clerk the following.

“I don’t know why the fax number isn’t working! I received it from one of their agents and everything!”

The clerk took a look at the document and instantly took the fax as looking fishy. Some discussion ensued, and my jaw almost dropped as it was pointed out that the customer was responding to a Lottery Notification email he had received the day prior. Holy smokes! Forgive me if those of you reading have been fooled by the described lottery emails - but I had no idea people actually were naive enough to think these lottery claims were authentic!

All in all the customer left with an embarrassed face - quite appropriate in this situation, being that he was about to send off his personally identifiable information to a foreign fraud institution!

Please Stay Alert - And Beware!

Hopefully this little story I have shared will open your eyes to the real dangers and con artists that truly are out on the net. Always be apprehensive when responding to emails from unknown sources - as there is an ever growing industry in bank account theft, stealing money, etc…

As with everything in life, there is no such things as a free lunch - otherwise, judging by how many lottery offers I get - I would be a multi billionaire!