Watch Out For Lottery Fraudsters!

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

The UK Office of Fair Trading is warning consumers to beware of bogus telemarketing fraudsters who are targeting UK consumers.

These crooks are calling unsuspecting Britons to inform them that they have won a major prize in a foreign lottery. These calls often follow an earlier telephone call or mailshot, in which the scammers claim the victim’s name has been entered into a national lottery or prize draw, usually in English-speaking countries such as Canada, Australia and South Africa. The OFT has noted a huge increase in calls from Canada, with at least fifteen call centres targeting UK consumers.

Here’s the crunch: all that the ‘winners’ need to do is pay a fee to cover the company’s admin costs and taxes, and their fortune will be released. However, after sending the payment, the victims never hear from the company again – and no one has ever received a genuine prize.

This looks like an obvious scam, doesn’t it – surely no one would fall for this old heap of tripe?

Sadly, four in five victims are aged over 65, so it’s clear that the villains are targeting the elderly and vulnerable. The callers are friendly and persuasive, usually posing as a lottery official, civil servant, customs officer or lawyer to add credibility to their story.

The OFT claims that thousands of naive punters have parted with at least £3m in the last six months alone, before realising that they have been victims of a professionally organised hoax. Some people have paid a string of ‘claim fees’ in response to follow-up calls, before finally coming to their senses (or being relieved of their life savings).

However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. As the OFT explains, most victims are too ashamed to report the crime. Others stay silent because they are afraid that someone else will be given control of their money because of their error. Even worse, people who have been hoodwinked find their names have been added to a ‘sucker list’, which is sold to other scammers and used to bombard victims with many more ‘get rich quick’ schemes.

The OFT has created a telephone hotline (020 7211 8111) in order to collect evidence to be used to prosecute these scammers. It offers the following advice:

If you have any doubts at all about a caller, simply hang up.
Never send out money in order to claim a prize (this is known as “advance-fee fraud”).
Never give any private or financial information to unknown callers.
Canada (along with many other countries) does not have a national lottery.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

So, please do a good deed this Christmas by warning all your elderly and vulnerable friends, relatives and neighbours about these scams, before someone you know is cheated.

OFT Case Study

Mr J received a phone call from a representative of the ‘First National British Holdings’ in Canada, to be told that he had won £225,000 on the ‘Canadian National Lottery’.

The caller told him that, under Canadian Law, he was required to pay a tax of 1% of his winnings, which is £2,250. Mr J then received a series of calls from individuals claiming to be Canadian and UK customs officials, lawyers and file administrators. He sent six further payments for ‘customs fees’, ‘insurance levies’, and ‘legal release fees’, due to a series of convincing calls, which included claims that First National British Holdings had gone into administration.

By the time Mr J received a call claiming to be from UK Customs, asking for £2,000, he felt he couldn’t afford to cut his losses and sent the money. Mr J lost £18,750 in total. He did not contact UK or Canadian authorities, but was tracked through material seized in an arrest in Toronto.

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