SOMERSET SCAMMERS BUSTED
10 April 2009
A satisfying story of lotto fraudsters caught
redhanded
The satisfying prospect of a gang of lotto fraudsters
meeting their comeuppance features in a story in The
Register this week, which reported that Somerset police
have busted a bogus lottery winner scam following a raid
on a cheque processing and clearing house.
Readers will be familiar with the letter-based scam at
the centre of the raid, where the fraudsters attempted
to dupe members of the public into thinking they had won
a prize. Recipients were asked to send in GBP 20 as an
"administrative fee" in order to collect their
"winnings," and of course if they were unwary enough to
do so, that was the last they saw of the lottery, their
fictitious winnings...and their GBP 20.
In
reality, the cheques sent in as the "administrative fee"
were cashed and money laundered before being sent to
fraudsters based overseas, The Register reveals.
Officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA)
led an investigation into the scam, culminating in a
raid on an address in Somerset, where cheques and
payments adding up to nearly GBP 500 000 were recovered.
These cheques will be returned to an incredible (and
gullible) 22 000 senders, with a note explaining the
scam and urging them to be more careful in future.
Police investigators opined that the scam might have
netted as much as GBP 35 million had it been allowed to
continue.
Scam emails often claim that recipients
have won prizes in lotteries run by overseas lottery
organisations, or even Microsoft, in the case of one
common variant. In reality, these fraudulent messages
are the opening gambit in an advanced fee fraud.
Online Casino News Courtesy of
Infopowa
More news here.
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