Lottery scams, shams and cons are nothing new – devious individuals have been trying to dupe unsuspecting lottery enthusiasts out of their hard earned cash for years. Law enforcement organisations around the globe are working hard to put the scam merchants out of business, but unfortunately the con men are like the zombies in any half-decent horror movie, and when you put one group out of commission three more groups emerge somewhere else.

Originally the lottery scams approached potential victims by direct mail, but now the internet is the tool of choice among the con men. For a laughably small amount of money, a con man can send the same e-mail to millions of people all over the world just by clicking the right button, and even if he only gets a handful of replies he will make enough profit to keep him going for months. In fact, lottery scamming is so lucrative that it’s fast becoming a favourite area of interest for large cross-border criminal organisations as well as unscrupulous individuals.

So what exactly do lottery scams involve? Well, it’s actually quite simple. The potential victim is sent an e-mail which tells them that they have recently won a major prize – often the jackpot – in a lottery. But because the victim lives overseas, they will need to pay a “small fee” to have their winnings transferred directly to their bank account. We put the phrase “small fee” in inverted commas because in some cases the amount requested has been as high as five figures.

In the most effective scams, the e-mail is written very carefully to look as official as possible, and sometimes includes links back to genuine lottery organisation pages. Occasionally phone numbers are also given, and these are supported by call centres to take questions and put the victim’s mind at rest that, yes, their win really is official!

You may think that people are so aware of e-mail spam that they wouldn’t get caught out by an approach such as this, but the desire to win among lottery players is often so high that it temporarily renders them blind to the idea that they are being deceived. And as we said earlier, the individuals and organisations behind the scam don’t need a huge number of people to fall for it. Because they send out millions of e-mails, even a fractional percentage of positive responses can make them massive amounts of money.

And how much money are we talking about? Well, according to one source, the Office of Fair Trading in the UK identified no less than fifteen call centres in Canada which – claiming to represent the Canadian Lottery – scammed British lottery enthusiasts out of £600,000. Globally, lottery scams are generating hundreds of millions for their operators, and leaving many of their victims destitute and heart-broken in the process.

No genuine lottery will ever ask a winner to pay them a cent before they transfer funds over. Furthermore, no genuine lottery will pay a jackpot to anyone they haven’t verified in person. And as if we needed to say this, no genuine lottery will pay out to an individual who hasn’t previously bought a ticket! So be on you guard. Should you ever receive an unexpected e-mail, letter or phone call informing you that you’ve won a lottery, but that you need to pay a fee or provide your bank details to receive your funds, do yourself a favour and hit delete or hang up. You haven’t won anything, but by being smart you will have avoided the devious grasp of yet another con artist.