Some phishing scams have gained notoriety for their ingenuity but we received a phishing letter today that would not get by even the most gullible. Numerous email and postal scams are circulating, referring to lotteries in Spain and claiming that the recipient of the letter has won a large sum of money! You have "won the lump sum of E915,810 in cash"!
Scammers earn millions from lottery scam
This is another lottery variant of the 419 style of scam - using the fake promise of a lottery win to lure victims and trick them into giving away their bank details, or by requesting payments for 'administration costs'. Most of these lottery scams originate from Nigeria, however there are an increasing number coming from Spain. You can guarantee a letter from Spain, claiming that you have won a lottery is a scam. Spanish police have recently smashed a huge gang that have been running these scams. Scammers have earned millions of Euros doing this - can you believe that people actually sent them money?
Cyber-criminals simply work the odds, knowing that someone, somewhere, will fall for their scam. If you get a similar e-mail / letter, you should ignore it. Do not contact the sender and especially do not give out personal information.
Tell-tale signs this is a phishing attempt:
- You didn’t enter a Spanish sweepstake / lottery or the email or letter is from a company you don't deal with!
- Misspellings - a lot of phishing emails aren't written by native speakers of the language (often English)
- An urgent tone
- Looking for sensitive information that legitimate companies don't typically ask for via e-mail. Companies don't email you asking you for confidential details
- Poor grammar - misplaced commas, bad sentence structure and the wrong word order are common e.g.’To being your claims
- Contains a link - the phishing email is only half the scam.
- Odd colours and formatting Phishing scams have been around for many years now, and it’s surprising how many people still don’t know about them.
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