National Lottery scams

Winning a lottery jackpot involves a huge amount of life changing money and unfortunately opens a window to some very ruthless scam merchants. You would think National Lottery scams would be fairly easy to spot, however and to you or me they usually are, but most of today’s active lottery scams are aimed at the most vulnerable people, such as the elderly.

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The most used lottery scams usually come in the form of email. The recipient will receive an email saying they have won a lottery prize and are usually asked to pay a release fee or confirm bank details. These kinds of lottery scams are probably one of the most dangerous. This is because it is very easy to make printed material look official. They can contain links to official National Lottery sites and sometimes duplicate National Lottery sites which look just like the genuine ones. This is where the most vulnerable people get caught out.

But we are not just talking about pennies being lost to these scams. Often there are huge amounts of money involved. A Yorkshire couple were conned out of £20,000 when they fell victim to a EuroMillions lottery scam. As you can see, these types of lottery scams are not just exercised in the UK's National Lottery. They are global, and people are falling victim to them all over the world.

For many months, people have been advised to buy lottery tickets online to help eradicate false claims from lost tickets but the office of fair trading in the UK is also advising everyone that they should not respond to any notifications that they won on a lottery that they have not entered and if you are ever in doubt as to whether any notifications are genuine or not, you can call Consumer Direct for advice on 08454 04 05 06.

8th September 2009

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