The public is advised to be wary of "Lottery Scams". The scams involve a variety of schemes, all designed to dupe victims into parting with their money.
The fraudsters typically send unsolicited letters through the postal mail, facsimile or the Internet, claiming that the recipients have won prize money in an overseas lottery. The recipients are often told that they were identified in a worldwide balloting system which had allocated the winning lottery numbers to them. To lend credence to the claim, the fraudsters may also send fictitious documents, such as the winning lottery ticket, to the recipients. The recipients are asked to contact the lottery's agent or provide their personal particulars and a bank account number to facilitate the transfer of the prize money to them. They are also usually told to keep the notifications confidential.
These lottery winnings do not exist. They bear the hallmarks of what are commonly known as "Lottery Scams" that are designed to convince and dupe the victims into parting with their money. Having deceived the victims into believing that they had won the lottery, the fraudsters convince the victims into making up-front payments, purportedly as tax or other forms of payments to administer the release of the 'prize money'. After duping the victims of their money, the fraudsters either conjure up more tales to solicit further payments from their victims, or may abscond altogether.
The fraudsters change their tactics regularly. Recently for example, they used the Short Message Service ("SMS") to send purported winning notifications to handphones of the victims or call the victims to inform them of their winnings. The victims are either told that their handphone numbers were picked as winning numbers in a Sweepstake Lottery or that the victims had won a cash prize in a lucky draw conducted by an overseas company. To claim their prize, the victims are requested to make up-front payments as processing fees.
What does a typical fraudulent notification look like?
Click the following attachments to view samples:
Sample 1 
(655KB) Sample 2 (271KB)
Remember, these lottery winnings, notifications, documents and communications are bogus and bear the hallmarks of schemes that are designed to dupe victims into parting with their money. The public is advised to be wary as such scams often take different forms and the fraudsters change tactics regularly. To lodge a complaint, please click here.
