New variation of the "gimme your bank details" scam.

SeanW

I just got a some wierd scam email from someone claiming to be from the European/British National Lottery. Apparently I just won £1.5m sterling with the only thing I did to enter being ... having an email address! Can't believe some of the crap these people expect people to fall for.

Needless to say I did not respond to this claptrap and promptly reported it to Yahoo as spam.

But unlike the traditional Nigerian style scam, they didn't ask for my bank account details straight away, rather, they tell me I should contact a named Emailee for proceed with my claim, who I presume would then lure me into handing over some info.

I've posted the email plus summary headers (the full headers dont say much more)

From: "EUROPEAN PRIZE AWARD DEPT." <admin029@bellsouth.net>
To: agency@delivery.org
Subject: Batch Number: UKNL5/A115-07
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:22:32 -0500

UNITED KINGDOM LOTTERY
The Lottery Company
P O BOX 1010
LIVERPOOL, L70 1NL UNITED KINGDOM

Ref Number: UKNL/05/8256/53219/QE327
Batch Number: UKNL5/A115-07

YOU HAVE WON £1,500,000 POUNDS STERLING

Our Dear Winner,
You have won the sum of £1,500,000 (One Million Five Hundred Thousand
Great British Pounds Sterling) from BRITISH LOTTERY on our 2007 New
Year Charity Bonanza.


The winning ticket was selected from a Data Base of Internet Email
Users,from which your Address came out as the winning coupon.We hereby urge
you to claim the winning amount quickly as this is a monthly lottery.
Failure to claim your win will result into the reversion of the fund to
our following month.

You are therefore requested to contact immediately out Claims
Department below quoting winning number: WINNING
NUMBER:05-08-10-18-20-46-{43}.TICKET NUMBER: 56475600545 188

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information
confidential till your claims is processed and your money remitted to
you .This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming
and unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned.

Contact Person Mr Thomas Lee.

Email: agent_thomas005@yahoo.com.hk

TEL: +447094657134

FAX: +448712390182

Congratulations once again.

Regards,
MRS.GRACE WALKER
Online coordinator for THE NATIONAL LOTTERY
Sweepstakes International Program.

Note that the sender address is from Bellsouth.net (American) and the full headers seem to confirm that.

Thoughts? Is this approach to scamming new? Or is there yet another agenda here?

How do the spam/scammers know that they didn't send this email, for example, to an American?

emaherx

No this is one of the older scams.

I got one yesterday that said I won the Candian National lottery.
It must the the fourth time I'v won in the last 12 months.

And the E-mail was south Afriacan

RaiseTheBlinds

well im going to hold on to 63 million euro in my bank account for a diamond dealer until he gets out of his war-torn country.
and ive been offered 10%.

he also emailed me 2 weeks later to say he was now a major oil refinery owner who needed my help in hiding $30M dollars worth of oil.
like theres room around my gaff ,... ppffff !

Capt'n Midnight

The "gimme your bank details" pitch is to see have you taken the bait. If you give them your bank details they could lodge money to your account :eek:

There are various expenses to meet before you can claim your money.
But don't worry if you fall victim to one of these scams you will almost certainly receive a helpful email shortly afterwards offering to help you recover your money. Of course they will keep a small percentage as a finders fee.
And there are various expenses to meet before you can (re)claim your money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner

The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence game dating back to 1588. In its original form, the confidence artist tells his victim (the mark) that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain (originally by King Philip II) under a false identity. The alleged prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and is relying on the confidence artist to raise money to secure his release. The confidence artist offers to let the mark supply some of the money, with a promise that he will be rewarded generously when the prisoner returns both financially and by being married to the prisoner's beautiful daughter. However, once the mark has turned over his money, he learns that further difficulties have arisen, requiring more money, until the mark is cleaned out and the game ends.

Key features of the Spanish Prisoner are the emphasis on secrecy and the trust the confidence artist is placing in the mark not to reveal the prisoner's identity or situation. The confidence artist will often claim to have chosen the mark carefully based on his reputation for honesty and straight dealing, and may appear to structure the deal so that the confidence artist's ultimate share of the reward will be distributed voluntarily by the mark

H3LLg0d

they should brush up on their spelling and grammer skills before attempting a scam:D