UK Lottery Scams - Annual Free Lotto

Sample Lottery Scam Email: UK Lottery - Annual Free Lotto

Another scam email purporting to be from the "UK Lottery".  Of course, there is no such legal lottery by this name. And you won their "Annual Free Lotto"!  Imagine, a lottery that gives away millions, yet no one buys a ticket.

Note that the real UK lottery is called "The National Lottery Commission" and is operated by the Camelot Group plc.

Note the usual clues to an obvious fraud that we have highlighted in the letter; keep confidential, selected by a random computer lottery of email addresses, no website of their own, use of free hotmail/yahoo email accounts, numerous misspellings, poor grammar and punctuation, etc.

Also see these pages:

For scam company names that start with other letters, click on the letter:

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-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
From: "jackpot draw" < jackpot_draw04@hotmail.com  >
Subject: YOU HAVE WON U.S$900,000:00
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 05:52:52 +0000

UK LOTTERY
UK HEAD OFFICE
SUITE 23-30,LION TOWERS
CENTRAL LONDON ENGLAND

Dear Winner,
We are please to announce you as one of the 10 lucky winners in the FreeLotto draw held on the 20th of Jan, 2007. All 10 winning addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 50,000,000 international emails.Your email address emerged alongside 9 others as a category 2 winner in this year's Annual FreeLotto Draw. Consequently,you have therefore been approved for a total pay out of USD900.000.00(Nine hundred thousand United States Dollars) only.

The following particulars are attached to your lotto payment order:
(i)   winning numbers:  37-13-43-85-67-11
(ii)  email ticket number:  FL754/22/76
(iii) lotto code number:    FL09622UK
(iv)  the file Ref number:  FL/04/736207152/UK
 

Please contact the underlisted claims officer as soon as possible for the immediate release of your winnings:
Dr Vin Khumalo
E-mail Address: vin_khumalo1000@yahoo.co.uk
N.B:Steps to claiming your prize;
1.Please quote your Reference number in all correspondence with the claims officer.
2.Winners should send to claim officer account detail or address where they want their prize paid or sent.
3.Winners must send their names,address,telephone number and means of identification (international passport or drivers licence)to claim officer, vian email, to process the immediate payment of your prize.

Once again on behalf of all our staff,

CONGRATULATIONS!!!


Sincerely,
Julia Simsom Smith.
Promotions Manager
 

 

Common signs that it is a scam:

  • the return email addresses are free Yahoo email accounts,

  • The recipient "won" without buying a ticket (so where does the money come from?)

  • "For security reasons" you're not allowed to talk to anyone about it (especially the police or consumerfraudreporting.org!) - which ought to be odd since lotteries thrive on publicity!

Names of Scam / Fake / Fraud Lottery 

Click here for the huge list of the names of the currently identified lottery scams companies

And please let us know about any suspicious calls or emails you receive.  We look for patterns so that we can alert the authorities and victims to new scams, before it is too late!

 

 

 

For a comprehensive list of national and international agencies to report scams, see this page.