confirmation?

Question

Yahoo/Msn Lottery
Incoperation
Baley House, Har Road
Sutton, Greater London
SM1 4te
United Kingdom.



This is to inform you that you have won a prize money of TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDED UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($2,500,000.00) for the month of SEPTEMBER 2007 Lottery promotion which is organized by YAHOO/MSN LOTTERY INC & WINDOWS LIVE.

YAHOO/MSN & MICROSOFT WINDOWS, collects all the email addresses of the people that are active online, among the millions that subscribed to Yahoo and Hotmail we only select five people every Month as our winners through electronic balloting System without the winner applying,we congratulate you for being one of the people selected.



You are to contact the events manager on or before your date of Claim, Winners Shall be paid in accordance with his/her Settlement Centre.
Yahoo/Msn Lottery Prize must be claimed no later than 10 days from date of Draw Notification after the Draw date in which Prize has won. Any prize not claimed within this period will be forfeited.

These are your identification numbers:

Batch number.....................YM 09102XN
Reff number.......................YM35447XN
Winning number...................YM09788


These numbers fall within your Location file, you are requested to contact the events manager, send your winning identification numbers to him,to enable him verify your claims.How ever you will have to fill and submit this form to the events manager for verification & direction on how you can claim your winning fund.

1. Full name..............
2. Contact Address........
3. Age....................
4. Telephone Number.......
5. Marital Status.........
6. Sex....................
7. Next Of Kin............
8. Zip Code...............
9. Occupation.............
10. Company................
11.State:.................
12.Country................
13.Nationality............
14. Your Reference and Batch number are at the top of this mail:

(CONTACT EVENTS MANAGER)
Name:DR KURTH HANS
Email: [e-mail]
TEL: [phone]
TEL:[phone]
FAX: [phone]


FURTHER CONTACTS ON PAYMENT

Mr.Edward Thompson
Account Officer
Inter-Bank Payment & Security Company
Office Tel; + 234 1 891 7211 , + 234 1 475 7368 ,
Direct Mobile; + 234 803- 5299951
Fax; + 234 1 759 5297
Email; [e-mail]

Thank you and Accept my hearty congratulations once again!

Answer 1

This is a SCAM. Check out the below link for confirmation of various lottery scams, including the famous Yahoo/MSN lottery scams and how to report them.
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/lotteryscam_Yahoo2.php
Unscrupulous thieves have sent you this email and they are trying to part you from your hard earned cash. They will often ask you to call a premium rate number and keep you holding on whilst you rack up a huge phone bill. They are then paid a large proportion of this phone bill. They may ask you to divulge personal information about yourself or ask for your bank or credit card details. Do not divulge any such information under any circumstances. It is surprising how many innocent victims have been duped by these types of emails. Just remember the thieves who send them are very clever and extremely convincing. I suggest you delete the email and send it into cyberspace, hopefully along with the thieving scumbags who send them.
Check out these sites for further information :
http://www.scambusters.com
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

Answer 2

I can confirm this is a scam.

Let's examine the email together.

First off, notice how the term MSN is sometimes written as Msn, and others as MSN. Would a corporation as big as Microsoft create this huge cash giveaway, and then misrepresent their brand in this manner?

Next notice the spelling mistakes in the 'official' address. "Incoperation" yeah right.

Then there is the prize, "TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDED UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($2,500,000.00)"

So we are expected to believe that a major corporation or two would get together to give away five prizes of $2.5m per month, and they can't spell 'hundred' and miss out the word 'thousand?' Seriously, they are giving away over $12m and they can't find a person that can spell?

It also seems odd that this giveaway is based in the UK, yet have chosen the USD for the prize? Why not the Pound or even the Euro?

Next look at how the branding is messed up. Yahoo, MSN lottery Inc. Microsoft Windows, Windows Live, Hotmail.

Do you think that a multi million dollar corporation capable of simply randomly giving away over twelve million dollars a month in prizes would have such confusion over brand names and company identity?

Just a small niggle too. Notice how they have randomly capitalized words in the email too?

Notice the 'reff' number. Sorry, but no one who graduated high school in an English speaking country would abbreviate reference to 'reff.'

In the information they ask for, they ask for a zip code. America is about the only country in the world with a zip code. Most other countries call it a 'post code.' Certainly they do in the UK. So why would an email from the UK ask about a zip code?

Why would a lottery need to know your marital status or occupation and employer?

Why would a lottery claiming to be part of MSN lottery have a Yahoo email address?

Finally, the payments contact at 'Inter-Bank Payment & Security Company' doesn't even pass the laugh test. Does that really sound like a bank? Does the email address even look valid? Isn't it odd that there is no such web site for such a bank? We are expected to believe that a bank capable of handling multi-million dollar transactions globally doesn't have an official web site?

Doesn't it also seem VERY strange that the phone numbers for 'Inter-Bank' are using Nigerian international dialing codes?

Nigeria is a very poor third world country. How would they fit into the equation of a rich American corporation operating out of the UK giving away millions of dollars, using a Nigerian bank? Pretty unlikely. I think you'll find that both America and the UK have plenty of banks they could have used, without picking one in Nigeria to handle millions of dollars.

I'm sure if you Google this particular scam, you'll find it quite easily. But even without proof, simple common sense dictates that this cannot be true.

If you contact these people they will use the information you give them to steal from you. It's just that simple.

Answer 3

scam