How do I report a Hoax Email?

Question

Just before Christmas I received an Email from the National Lottery. Stating that my email address has been given a lottery ticket and it had been picked as a winning ticket. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? No, neither can I. My winning prize was in fact £250,000 and all I had to do was contact the claims department by email! Easy I hear you say! Well I havent heard a dicky bird since. has anyone else had this. THEY ARE SICK INDIVIDUALS obviously I havent won a sausage, but I could have been niave and gone out spending what I thought I was gong to receive. I am so mad!

Answer 1

If you place £5,000 into my back account I will be able to help you claim

Answer 2

These National Lottery things have been doing the rounds a lot recently. I myself have had several in the past couple of months. Most originate from Nigeria, and rather fortunately at the moment they don't seem to have much of an idea of how the National Lottery works. Rather basic mistakes occur in early versions of this scam - giving a Yahoo email address for example, while others seem not to be aware that any correspondance from the National Lottery people at all would be headed "Camelot", not "National Lottery UK" or some other made-up organisation.

If you have not brought a ticket then you have not won. This works in almost exactly the same way as competitions in the regular post where you are told you are a "winner" and have to ring a premium rate phone line to claim your "prize". The prize in the event turns out more often than not to be some kind of free holiday / timeshare thing where you are pressurised into signing up. The only difference with the internet scam is at some point they will either ask you for your bank details to pay this "mythical cheque" into (at which point your bank account will be emptied quicker than you can say "antidisestablishmentarianism") or they will ask you to pay some kind of administration fee before they hand over your money, and you will be guaranteed never to see either again.

Some of these emails are laughable in their ineptitude, others are scarily convincing. The firms they are attempting to spoof (usually banks, eBay, paypal etc.) are always interested to receive examples of these emails, not least so they can improve their own security. Reporting an email to the senders internet service provider can be quite satisfying, but these kind of people can easily just set themselves up again with a different email account. If any actual crime or fraud was committed, then the police would probably be interested as well. I think they do now have a dedicated department for Nigerian 419 scams and similiar . Not sure of their address though.

Answer 3

Most companies have an email address where you can forward fake emails and they will investigate them. Go to the national lottery website and go to the contact us screen and there should be an email address there. Just forward the email to them and they'll get on the case and hopefully they will find the selfish idiots that send these emails out.

Answer 4

I am a retired Police Officer that has investigated Internet fraud and scams for years. Depending on the country of origin, here is the web site of the 17 nation law enforcement task force that investigates cross border Internet scams and fraud. You may file a complaint there. w w w econsumer.gov

Answer 5

There is a dept in the met police that deals with this type of thing get the details off google and send them and email with a copy of this hoax email as an attachment . tell them to contact you and sort it .

Answer 6

Got to either the FTC or FCC web site www.ftc.gov or www.fcc.gov I can not remember which, but one of them has a link where you can forward that sort of trash

Answer 7

was it from the propper lottery here in the uk then? or ment to be?

If so thats pretty decieving isn't it