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Dear Sir, Madam, you won 1.000.000 Euros. With outmost joy, we are pleased to inform you of the result of the East-West Australia Lotteries International program... This is the beginning of an e-mail belonging to a very diffused category of scam e-mails, the "lottery series". These e-mails (you can see browse several examples of those in the lottery e-mail scam forum) are all similar in that they communicate you that you are the winner of a lottery: your e-mail was extracted in a draw and you won a considerable sum of money. Details are given on your winning ticket/serial number. Preliminar information on how to claim you money is also included: usually the letter requires that you send over a number of personal details including sensitive information (name-address-bank details) to an e-mail address. What Happens if you reply? If you reply to the letter you are very soon asked for a payment of some kind to 'release' the funds. People who fall in this scam can continue to pay subsequent sums of money until they realize they are beeing simply robbed. The moment you'll get the money will simply never come. While you think you are in the process of getting the money, you are in fact transferring YOUR money to the scammers.
The Psycology of the Scam The psicological trick behind lottery scams is the same that undelies many different kinds of scams: the letters tricks you into believing YOU WILL GET A LOT OF MONEY WITH NO OR VERY LITTLE EFFORT. This is exactly what happens for example with the Nigerian Scam letters, who promise you a significant share (10-40%) of a multimillion dollar sum (25-50.000.000$): Lottery Scam: You won 2.000.000 dollars in a lottery Nigerian Scam: We need your help to transfer money from Nigeria and you'll get 10% of 20.000.000$ It's the SAME mechanism: YOU WILL GET A LOT OF MONEY. Once the scam artists succed in getting your trust, once you really believe you will really get the money, YOU WILL GLADLY DO ANYTHING THE SCAMMER TELLS YOU TO in order to get it. This includes spending the high amounts of YOUR money that the scammer will tell you you have to spend, in order to get your final amount. The requests for YOUR money are usually motivated telling you that:
- the final sum (the million dollars) is 'locked' until you get it, it is not accessible nor usable for the expenses that might arise in the money transfer process
- There are indeed expenses to be done to get the money. This might come under a number of appearances, such as for example legal fees, banking fees or fees of various nature
Requests for money virtually never end. Since of course the moment that you are waiting, the very moment in which you will get your 2.000.000$, will never come, you will be simply asked for money, more money and again more money, with various excuses, until you realize you are beeing scammed. In a perverse loop, the more you pay to the scammers, the more you believe the moment you will get 'your' money is approaching. In your perception, each time you pay another 'legal fee', you are getting closer to 2.000.000$ (in this example). These 2000$ they ask you for the 'legal fees' are NOTHING for you if you are convinced you are about to get 2.000.000$. How much would you pay to get 2.000.000? Wouldn't you gladly pay even 1.500.000 if you was really convinced you'd get 2.000.000$ in return? You can find a nice collection of scam lottery e-mails in the dedicated forum , where you can also post you personal lottery e-mails. Posting scam e-mails in a public forum is an EXTREMELY valuable action, as it allows other people who recieve the same message to be warned it's a scam, by just doing a little search on the web. We have recieved litterally dozens of messages from visitors to the web site thanking us and the posters for being able to undestand the great e-mail they just received was in fact a dangerous scam. TURN YOUR JUNK E-MAILS INTO A VALUE, POST THEM IN THE E-MAIL SCAM FORUMS!!!  Discuss this article
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