January 11, 2007
What do you get when you cross the old-time AOL/Microsoft email tracking hoax with a modern day email lottery scam? Something just like this:
Dear Lucky winner,If you've managed to make it past the bad grammar and nearly unintelligible sentence structure, the scam email then claims:
WINNING NOTIFICATION
The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organised a Sweepstakes marking the end of year anniversary we rolled out over 100,000.000.00 (One Hundred Million Great Britain Pounds) for our end of year 2006 Anniversary Draws. Participants for the draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide range of web hosts which we enjoy their patronage.
Your email address as indicated was drawn and attached to ticket number 008795727498 with serial numbers BTD/9080648302/06 and drew the lucky numbers 14-21-25-39-40-47(20) which subsequently won you 1,000,000.00 (One Million Great Britain Pounds) as one of the jackpot winners in this draw. You have therefore won the entire winning of 1,000,000.00 (One Million Great Britain Pounds).So what happened to the 100 million promised in the first paragraph? Suddenly the "entire winning" has been cut by 99 million GPB. Ouch. But since this isn't real money that will ever be paid out (at least not by the scammers), such errors are immaterial. Those who respond to the scam will instead be victimized in one of two ways:
- Respondents will be instructed to send processing fees to cover certain costs before the check can be released. Of course, these processing fees, like the lottery winnings, are completely made-up (as is the check the scammers promise to be sending). The whole point is to get the victim to send the scammers some money.
- Respondents will be sent a forged check - likely for even more than the supposed winnings. They will be instructed to deposit the check into their bank account and send a portion of it back to the scammers to pay for processing or other fees. The check may even clear the bank initially, lending an air of credibility to the whole scam. But it will eventually bounce, the bank will demand the money back, and it will be you - the victim - legally responsible to make good on the funds.
Our special thanks and gratitude to Bill Gates and his associates. We wish you the best of luck. Thank you for being part of our promotional award program and commemorative Anniversary Draws.Remember, if something sounds to good to be true, it is.
