An Australian (not Nigerian) scam

I thought this might be of interest to warn your readers.

While most people are by now aware of the numerous scams coming from Nigeria, seeing that this is from Australia with English links, they may be more tempted to inquire. I vaguely remember something similar a few years ago but, as in most things, "how can you expect to win anything when you have not entered any lottery in the first place?"

Thus, the best thing for this is to shred it. (David Brisley, chief financial officer, Island Beverages)

I must feature an excerpt from the letter sent to 'winners' informing them that they won. In this case the winner is, or should I say, are, Island Beverages, and believe it or not it is worded as follows:

Dear, Island Beverages (sic)

This is to inform you of the result of Australian Lottery Program held on March 3, 2006. Among the 129 participating finalists playing 6,000 full tickets in the fifth series, from a pool of US$181,600,000 (one hundred and eighty-one million six hundred thousand US dollars), in cash. Your company name attached to ticket number 525-11464992-750 with serial number 760112-05 drew the lucky numbers 09-14-23-24-31-41, which consequently won the lottery prize in that category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sum payout of US$1,800,000 (one million, eight hundred thousand US dollars) in cash credited to file Ref. No. AGB/9800/1479701/02.

Congratulations!!

What a load of rubbish! However, believe it or not, it is a known fact that there are people, albeit a small minority, who do actually fall for it! What makes it worse is that, once they realise that it is a scam, they are inclined not to admit it, particularly in cases in which the respective 'winners' actually paid some money.

Rather than print "Dear David Brisley" they printed "Dear, Island Beverages". Indeed in view of the thousands, possibly millions of copies they send, it is most likely to make such errors as "Dear, Island Beverages".

The important thing to be aware of is that, at a certain point in the process, they ask you for money supposedly to process your winnings. Indeed I have received similar letters and on one occasion I played along with them until they asked me for money to pay for "processing fees".

I replied by asking them to take the money from my winnings whereupon they dropped me like a ton of bricks.