Winning without playing

Well here’s a fantastic new thing that seems to sweeping the nation. You can now win things without even entering the competitions or playing the games. Isn’t that brilliant?
I think it is really great that I can win hundreds of thousands of pounds without buying a single ticket, playing a single game or entering a single competition.

Below are a few examples of emails I have received from various places informing me that I am now quite wealthy. Amazing really considering I have no idea where I entered the draws or how I won without playing.

I have not included the email addresses that the winning notifications were sent from, but I will cover that after these examples.

The following examples are shown in the order that I received them.

Congratulations You Have Won.
PEUGEOT AUTOMOBILES LOTTERY WINNING NOTIFICATION
Peugeot Auto-mobiles headquaters, 19 Ul,
Essex , PE9 2YP , London
United Kingdom.

PEUGEOT ONLINE CAR /CASH AWARD PRIZE NOTIFICATION.

This is to inform you that you have been selected for
a cash prize of £300,000.00 (Three Hundred Thousand
Great British Pounds) and a brand new Peugeot 407
Car,From the International online programs held
recently in London the United Kingdom .

==============================================================
Sir John Greening,
Peugeot Auto-mobiles headquaters, 19 Ul,
Essex , PE9 2YP , London
United Kingdom.
Phone: +447045712612

E-mail: @yahoo.com.hk

===============================================================
Contact him with your secret pin code PGA00111234 and
your reference number PGA: 12058006/06.You are also
advised to provide him with the under listed
information as soon as possible:

Claims Requirements:

1. Name in full———————–
2. Address—————————-
3. Next Of Kin————————
4. Occupation————————-
5. Phone/Fax————————–
6. Present Country——————-

===============================================================
Congratulations once again!

With Best Regards
Dominic Gerald
Lottery Manager.

Wow, £300,000 and a brand new Peugeot, without even entering anything. apparently it would seem that i have just “Been selected”. Nice!

FREE LOTTERY PROMOTIONS

Dear Sir/Madam,
you e-mail won you the lump sum payout of(1millionGBP)Contact your claims officer for your claims/winningsEmail: @gmail.com

My email has won me a million. Sweet! I wonder what email that was.

Ukloto

Dear Lucky Winner,

The result of our computer draw (#2764) selected your name and email
address attached to e-ticket number: UK/00076295 with Serial number
4398/05 which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.e.

match 5 plus bonus.You have therefore been approved to claim a total
sum of £ 350,000.00( Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great Britain
Pounds Sterling) in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/03, Reference
Number: LSUK/200-26937 and Batch Number: 2008MJL-01.

Find below is the contact details of our Help Desk :
Contact Person : Mr. Kenneth Rooney
Contact Address : ______________@hotmail.co.uk
Direct Tel Num : +447031870768

You are advised to send the Lottery Help Desk a mail to their email
address and ask them what is the procedure of claim of your winning
prize.

Regards.
Mrs. Elizabeth Grethe.
Online Co-ordinator.

This time a computer chose my email address. Again I wonder why. I notice that this one can’t even spell ‘Lotto’ in the title.

UK LOTTERY CLAIM

Dear Winner,

We happily announce to you the draw (#963) of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY,Online Sweepstakes International programme held on 10th of
February,2008 Your e-mail address has been selected randomly amongst twenty
others by a Computer Ballot Systemthrough a WORLD WIDE WEB SITE SEARCH
ENGINE”.Here is your ticket number:418 8354952 518 with Serial number 9418/07
that won you £516,778.00 Pounds.

Claims Requirements:
1.Full Name:………………………….
2.Address:………………………
3.Nationality:………………….
4.Occupation:………………..
5.Age:……………………..
6.Sex:……………………………….
7.Phone……………………..
8.State of Origin:…………………….
9.Marital Status…………………..
10.country……………….

Claims Agent
Mr Bruce Ferguson
Email: @hotmail.com

Yours Truly
Stacy Wagen

My email was randomly selected. I am such a lucky bloke. I’m really clocking up the cash now, after all the years of having not much luck suddenly I’m winning everything. Amazing!

UK NATIONAL LOTTERY

AWARD FINAL NOTIFICATION:
We happily announce to you the draw (#999) of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on the 27th of
February,2008.

You were entered as dependent clients with: SERIAL NUMBER: 144-66584 and
Batch number BT-4478474121P.

Your email address attached to the ticket number: 74454774 that drew the
lucky winning numbers which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd
category i.e match 5 plus bonus.

You have been approved for a payment of £800,000.00 POUNDS (EIGHT HUNDRED
THOUSAND Pounds Sterling.) in cash credited to file reference number:
UKL/K5998/U4.

This is from a total cash prize of Eight million pounds shared among the
ten international winners in first categories.

In other to file for your claim,you have to Contact our Lottery Agent with
the following information.

1.FULL NAMES:
2.ADDRESS/COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE:
3.NATIONALITY:
4.AGE:
5.SEX/MARITAL STATUS:
6.OCCUPATION:
7.TELEPHONE(HOME):
8.TELEPHONE(MOBILE):
9.FAX:

MR.JOE COOPER.
UNITED KINGDOM LOTTERY CLAIMS AGENT.
Email: @hotmail.com
Tel:+447031817095

My email address has won me even more money without me having to do anything. Interesting that my winnings are a share of the “Eight million pounds shared among the
ten international winners in first categories.” Doesn’t that seem a bit odd that the other winners were ‘international’ considering the title says “UK NATIONAL LOTTERY”?

NATIONAL LOTTERY

This email is to notify you that your email address was
randomly selected and entered into our free amount of £2,500,000.00 Great British
Pounds.

YOUR WINNING DETAILSz

REFERENCE NUMBER: BTL/491OXI/04
BATChNUMBER:12/25/0304
TICKET NUMBER:564-75600-545-188

Representative: MrDavid Spencer

Email:verificationboard1@yahoo.com.hk
________________________________________________

This message was sent using Dodo Webmail – www.dodo.com.au

Again my email address was randomly selected and has won me two and a half million pounds.

In this last example I decided to leave the address that I need to reply to. I left it to illustrate my point about all these reply addresses.
They are all similar in the way that they start with ‘verificationboard1′ or ‘claimsdepartment1′ etc.

Notice that all the reply addresses are freely available email addresses that anyone could set up?
Hotmail, Yahoo and gmail. I suppose there must be some people out there that wouldn’t question that on first impressions. Why would a company that is about to send me thousands and in some cases millions of pounds, not have a ‘proper’ business address? can these companies really not afford a private email address? They have to use Hotmail, Yahoo etc? Yeah right.

Well with the amount of spam we get these days it’s not really a surprise to see that someone gets these type of email scam attempts, but there are probably many people out there who might fall for it.

I will always expose things like this in the hope that if just one person who reads this is saved from such a scam, then I have done a good deed.

My advice: Be aware that almost everyone these days is out to rip you off. There are plenty of scams out there and many are really well set up. Much better set up than these lame attempts anyway. Some look genuine and would be hard to spot as fakes.

Read such emails carefully and look at things like reply addresses, names of businesses and all the usually overlooked details.
never give out any personal details whatsoever without thoroughly checking the sender’s details more carefully. Do a bit of research and be very wary.

It is worth remembering the old old saying that ‘If something seems too good to be true, it probably is’.