UK Lottery Tickets For Overseas Customers
How often has it happened to you? You are minding your own business when a mysterious email pops into your inbox. It claims to be from a lottery operator, often located in the UK, and advises you that you have won a lot of money. It will usually also be listed as urgent and give you a very short period of time in which to contact them and lay a claim. These scams, known sometimes as advance fee fraud, work by mimicking the websites, logo’s etc. Of genuine lottery operators or companies that sell UK lottery tickets to people all over the world. In actual fact they are not connected at all and just use this to try and win your trust.
Be careful and do not fall for this type of con. Use common sense when receiving unexpected messages by email, especially those involving money. It is all too easy to be scammed and lose money that you can’t afford to. Fortunately these con-men are mostly creatures of habit and give some clues that they are not on the level.
Remember too that you have no chance of winning a competition that you never entered in the first place. This seems like an obvious statement but some people really are tricked like this. If you suddenly receive an email telling you that you won a lot of money in a lottery you never entered then you should immediately be suspicious.
Another suspicious sign is the secrecy which they ask you to observe, according to them because there have been some mix-ups with names and addresses of prizewinners. They also use phrases like email draw or claim that the prize is being paid from a draw that had no sold tickets. Beware, no genuine lottery works like this.
The email will typically ask you to get in contact with a claims agent. A legitimate lottery operator will have one of their staff directly contact you not an agent. If you do reply to this alleged agent you will be requested to pay them money upfront to cover some sort of charges before the prize money can be paid out. Examples used are banking charges, courier costs, processing or admin fees and others.
Any money sent to these people is unlikely to ever be seen again. Most likely once they have your money you will also never hear from the claim agent again either. In most countries it is illegal anyway for a lottery operator to ask for an upfront payment from a winner. If there are any genuine charges they would simply be taken from the winnings before they are paid out.
The language used is another clue. Phrases such as Winning Notification and Lottery Sweepstake are generally not used by genuine lottery operators or associated businesses that sell UK lottery tickets in other countries for example.
