Lottery Scam Victims Reimbursed
10/04/2009 01:22:25
In a move rarely seen 20,000 lottery scam victims are reimbursed after the actions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The losers in the scam were typically old and vulnerable people and each of them will receive a letter from the Serious Organised Crime Agency with a cheque for $20 and a note explaining to them that they had been targeted by criminals.
SOCA will inform each of them that they were victims of a phoney lottery known as the International Prize Disbursement Center which sent out personalised mailshots designed to making recipients believe that they had won £2 million in a lottery sweepstake.
The organisation raided a premises in Somerset last June and discovered almost £500,000 in cash, those that had answered the mail shot were asked to send £20 and SOCA believes that had they not caught out the phoney lottery organisation they might have taken more than £35 million in a year
The International Prize Disbursement Center is just one of the many mass marketing frauds that aim to steal relatively small amounts of money from large numbers of people. It’s a common scam and of course total nonsense but vulnerable people do fall for them all the time.
It’s very rare for money from a lottery scam to be reimbursed as these crimes are particularly hard to track as they are often done from many locations around the world. If you receive a letter telling you that you have won a large amount of money on a lottery you have not participated in then the best course of action to take it to bin it and forget about it.
Page Last Updated: 17/06/2010 17:02:07
