I've recived an email, that said "you won a Lottery.."

[Carlos]

Please i wat to know wath is this tale. bacause if it is not realy. i think the people that play with feeling must be serely punished by low.

Any way, some days ago i've recived an email saying "You won a lottery for € 750.000.-, and they send to me a form to fill and send to them for opening an account (first a credit of €355) for transfers the money i won to my country account, but i think it is a froud could you help me please.

[John Fairheart]

Carlos,

Thank you for posting your question. As you suspect, the email you have received is indeed a scam.

There are some key points to remember about Lottery Winning Emails:-

(a) You cannot win a lottery that you have never purchased a ticket for. Some emails say that you do not have to, but a Lottery by definition is a commercial enterprise that REQUIRES people to buy tickets in order for there to be any prize money. In short, they are lying.

(b) A fraudulent lottery will ask for a fee to allow your 'winnings' to be sent to you. In all cases it is this fee that is the scam. If you pay the money, you loose it forever, and they may come back and ask for more.

(c) Genuine organizations who purport to handle vast sums of money do not use free webmail providers such as yahoo, msn, hotmail etc. It is one of the ways the fraudsters can remain anonymous and untraceable.

You can find lots of information right here on the site about fake lotteries.

A brief description of Lottery Fraud is here:-
http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=255

A more in-depth view of a Lottery Fraud is here:-
http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=229

We have some Lottery Fraud example emails here:-
http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=39

If you have further questions, please feel free to post them.

[Unregistered]

Yes, i thank You for telling me this I already new these were scams. I haven't sent any money and don't plan to . But , Why can't we stop them. I'v had checks mail to me . I told them up front this is scam andI don't have any money to send. Thank You very much. I would love tostop these people. I know the way the timesare nowpeople need more money and they fall for this. I went to some meetings about this but,they keep sending e-mails. I want it to stop.So, tell me if their are other things I can do and help others about this. When they used my God had this planned for me makes me mad. My God is a wounderful God this is the devils work. Thank you from the bottom of my soul. Go get these people. Thank you

[Nyla]

There are a couple of things you can do in order to reduce the number of scam mails you receive. First, it's best not to post your email address online. Every time you put your email address on a web page, use it in a forum, or sign a guestbook with it, you are posting it publicly, and anyone (like the scammers) can come along and copy down your email. Once one scammer has it, it may be sold and resold to other scammers. If you use your email address to sign up for mailing lists, create website logins or purchase things online, you may end up on marketing lists that get sold to scammers and spammers alike.

You may want to set up a new email address and share it with only friends and family. It can also help if you mark all the scam mails you get as "Spam", if your email provider allows it.

You can also submit them to this site. http://www.joewein.net/419/419faq.htm#submit The site helps collect scam emails and improve filtering that prevents them from getting to your inbox.