I am attaching the email claiming they represent yahoo.com in the UK stating I am thr Yahoo lottery winner... is this a scam?
Messenger Yahoo! Lottery Results You won 拢800,000.00! Yahoo!
Mail congratulates you!
Yahoo! Mail announce you as one of the 10 lucky winners in the ongoing
Yahoo Lottery Draw held on the 24th of February, 2007.
All 10 winning email addresses were randomly selected from a batch of
50,000,000 international emails each from Canada , Australia , United
States , Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Oceania as part of our
international promotions program which is conducted annually,consequently,
you have been approved for a total pay out of 800,000.00 GBP (EIGHT
HUNDRED THOUSAND GREAT BRITISH POUNDS STERLING ).
This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of some
multinational companies as part of their social responsibility to the
citizens in the communities where they have operational base.
Further more your details(e-mail address) falls within our British
representative office in United Kingdom , as indicated in your play coupon
and your prize of 800,000.00 GBP will be released to you from this
regional branch office in UK.
HOW TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
These are your identification numbers.......................
Batch number.....................Lwh 09445
Lotto number.......................Lwh09446
Winning number...................Lwh09447
Yahoo!'s Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual
property infringement can be reached as follows:
You are advised to contact Dr. Mike Denison your claims agent.
Name Dr.Mike Denison.
CLAIMS AGENT Email: drmike_denison2007@yahoo.co.uk
You are to send the completed verification form below to our Agent in
the United Kingdom whose email address is given above so that you will
be advised on what to do to get your prize money. Congratulations once
more!!
1. FULL NAME
2. COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
3. PRESENT ADRESS.
4. DATE OF BIRTH
5. OCCUPATION
6. TELEPHONE NUMBER
6. FAX NUMBER (IF ANY)
7. MARITAL STATUS
8. WINNING NUMBER, BATCH NUMBER AND LOTTO NUMBER.
For security reasons, we advice all winners to keep this information
confidential from the public until your claim is processed and your
prize released to you. This is part of our security protocol to avoid
double claiming and unwarranted taking advantage of this programme by
non-selected winner or unofficial personnel.
Yours Sincerely,
DR. BRIAN HUNT (PHD)
LOTTO CO-ORDINATOR.
The Yahoo.com staff
Yahoo.com http://www.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Lottery Results
Yahoo! Lottery is a free service that does not require you to be a
Yahoo! registered user. do not open it its a bug there is no such thing as a yahoo lottery Millions of people got that same email. It's a SCAM, and a fake lottery is just one of the many gimmicks the spammers use to get you to open their emails and to get you to give them your personal information... or your money. By opening a spam mail, you could be unleashing a virus on your computer or alerting the spammers that your email address is an active one. This means you could receive a flood of spam mail (yes, even more than you get now... a LOT more) in the future. Never NEVER open mails from people you don't know or trust!! I win this lottery at least twice a week. I'm surprised I haven't bought Yahoo by now. Just enjoying my time on the yacht... btw, can I get you anything? Hello Fred, I received the same e-mail a month or so ago too, I also asked here in this forum.........lol Every one said it was spam but wouldn't be nice if it was true............ we can only dream. It is spam though Fred Sorry to tell you it鈥檚 a fraud...and seems that it has been going on for several months now, and under different names [Yahoo mail pack prize, Yahoo Mail Flash 2007 prize鈥?and I am sure some other names as well], they tell you won some amount of money and you should follow step 1, 2 and 3 to claim and verify the prize] and that its secured by Verisign and then you have to pay them first some amount of money for a certain reason before they mail you the money... Just ignore it. Don鈥檛 give them any kind of personal info鈥nd report it to mail-spoof@cc.yahoo-inc.com
By the way, if the mail relates to yahoo the company..their mail should end with (...yahoo-inc.com)..everybody else their mail end with (...yahoo.com) I can answer this question for you fine. Do not send these people any money or personal information! You can be 100% sure that you haven't won anything right now and here's an explanation of exactly what the notice you've recieved is intended to do.
If you are already a victim contact the U.S. Secret Service via email. This address will be provided toward the end of this answer!
I would laugh at the proposed scam and surely not respond to the punks responsible.
There are many Nigerian scams that are showing up nowadays. Please read the following carefully:
I can guarantee you that if you listen to these punks you will lose every bit of money you have and never receive any prize money as such a prize does not exist.
Another new popular scam is the lottery scam:
There is no British National Lottery Award, Overseas Lottery International, YAHOO & MSN Lotteries, Yahoo online dept., UK (United Kingdom) Lottery, Netherlands Lottery, British Lottery, Thunderball Online Lottery in the UK, Australian Lottery, Spanish Lottery, UK/FRANCO/GERMANY Lottery, Yahoo Lottery Microsoft Lottery (emmulating from the UK or anywhere else) or any other form of lottery you can win without buying a ticket. While some people might only copy and paste such email to their answer with a brief take on it, I will go into detail because I'm tired of this trash, as several of my friends have lost their a$$es to this scam. This is about as far away from legitimate as anything can get, whether it be a contest, promotion, or whatever. The Euro Asian whatever you talk about is a perfect example of how you can hand your lifesavings over to some fat-sweaty nigerian con-man (and your i.d. too).
There exists a certain form of immoral degenerate that trolls the internet searching for suckers who believe that they have gotten very lucky and won a lottery which they have never entered. They will probably entice you to send an advance fee to claim your non-existant winnings and if you do send this money, you can kiss it goodbye. The money will likely be en-route to Nigeria, a cesspool of fraud that has been the center of these types of fraud over the last few decades.
The best thing to do is to delete such emails immediately and to never reply to them. If you even reply, you risk having your email inbox flooded. If you call these people, expect to be harrassed over the phone at all hours of the night! In some cases, people who travel to claim their winnings in Nigeria are taken hostage, and in worse-case scenarios are killed when whoever is paying ransom payments exhausts their money supply. If anything online sounds to good to be true it always is buddy.
By the way, I have kind of become an anti-scam activists due to the fact that I have many friends who have had their identities and life savings stolen from them via these methods.
This is simply advance fee fraud (a prevalent type of fraud which continously asks for money to cover unforseen expenses) and is intended to drain your bank account, promising money that simply does not exist. Hopefully, this answers your question.
If you have any more questions, do a yahoo search on lottery scams, nigeria 419 scams, internet fraud, or advance fee fraud. You can also read more about this at www.secretservice.gov and www.419eater.com!
If you have lost money you should report it to the U.S. Secret Service at www.secretservice.gov
Now you know the basics of Advance Fee Fraud, a multi-million dollar industry that costs honest people their life savings everyday. Be happy you weren't duped by this scam! |
