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Police Foil Online Lottery Fraud

Nigerian scams are once again flocking the region of Mira Road (Mumbai, India) where police have detained 6 Nigerians who had collectively defrauded many innocent people, using lottery prize declarations as a lure. Timesofindia.indiatimes.com reported this on April 27, 2011.

Cops made the arrest following the tracing of IP addresses by cyber-crime officials.

The mode of operation the accused used involved crafting one false e-mail account apparently suggesting foreign countries as its host followed with haphazardly dispatching e-mails declaring lottery wins in British pounds or U.S dollars.

Stated a Police official, soon as the e-mails enticed the recipients, they would be directed for making a payment of certain delivery charges as well as customs duty in rupees amounting to lakhs. Timesofindia.indiatimes.com reported this on April 27, 2011.

The official said that victims just started believing the rewards; as a result, they succumbed to making payments valuing Rupees 5 to10 lakhs in anticipation of the lottery bonanza. They would continue to pay till they realized they had been defrauded. So during investigations, cyber cops found that the suspects in fact had drained victims' hard earned money, the official added.

Worryingly, according to security specialists, lottery scams of these kinds have been growing worldwide on account of people having easy access to the Internet.

Hence the specialists recommend users that they should adopt certain simple security measures for avoiding the above kind of scams. First, they should remember that they simply can't be a winner of a lottery prize that they never participated in. Hence, an e-mail offer that appears unbelievably true is most likely a scam.

Second, end-users mustn't ever wire money towards any prize claim in connection with a lottery draw in which they never took part at the very outset. For, the procedure for such claims in the case of genuine lottery draws is entirely different where the winner is asked in person the address and manner in which the prize-money he wishes to be sent to him. In particular, an authentic lottery will never ask for 'taxes' or 'processing fees' from the winner for making a claim of a lottery prize.

Related article: Police Arrests Six Suspects Associated With TJX Credit Scam

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