Warning against bogus British lottery

CONSUMERS were last night warned against bogus e-mails telling them they have won Britain’s lucrative National Lottery.

Cheats are trying to trick recipients into divulging their bank details and other personal information by telling them they have won hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling.

The fraudsters say they can only pay out the money if the recipients hand over the personal information but the details can then be used to empty their bank accounts or cheat them in other complex frauds.

The emails purport to come from the UK National Lottery Office in Liverpool but the accompanying telephone numbers are unobtainable British mobile phone numbers.

Recipients are told they have been picked at random to win a National Lottery prize but bosses of the real Lotto in Britain insist they never e-mail people to tell them they have won a prize.

“As a general rule, if people have not purchased a ticket for the UK National Lottery then they won’t have won a prize, and they should treat the e-mail with absolute caution,” said a spokesman for the British lottery.

“If the email says ‘Winning Notification’ or ‘Lottery Sweep Stake’ in the message then the email they’ve received is not from UK National Lottery.

“We don’t tell players how much they’ve won in an email and we don’t ask for any player information like name, address or bank details on an email.”

British lottery operator Camelot and the Consumers’ Association of Ireland (CAI) say such e-mails are increasing at an alarming rate while the National Consumer Agency last week alerted the public to a Spanish lottery scam operating by letter.

“There seems to be a resurgence in these type of e-mails, particularly to people with these Blackberry portable computers,” said CAI chief executive Dermott Jewell.

“This latest one looks better than the previous ones as it seems to ask for innocuous information but it’s information that these people will do their best to use to your detriment.”

In Britain consumer watchdogs reckon scams like the email lottery and other cons cost the public around €5 billion annually.