Knowing at
first glance that this is yet another internet scam, we
decided to investigate and find out how much money the crooks
who sent the message were after and how they intended to get
it. We also investigated the company names given in the
message (they are completely bogus). Here are the results of
our findings:
We typed
"Standard Trust Agency" into the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)
search engine and no results were found (Have you ever gotten
a "no results found" on a search engine??). On the other
search engines, no more than two of the three words appeared
in a single listing, which indicates that no such company
exists.
We typed
"Mega Lottery International" into the search engines and found
gambling sites, other lottery scam outfits, and web sites that
warn consumers about lottery scams. The three words "Mega
Lottery International" did not turn up anywhere, which shows
that the name is bogus.
The e-mail
we received was sent from travisassociates@tiscali.co.uk.
The web site www.tiscali.co.uk is an internet service
provider that is probably unaware of the scam. We typed
"Travis Associates" into 3 major search engines and got a
multitude of real estate agencies, a personal injury law firm,
and an automobile accessories company-- nothing even remotely
involved with processing lottery claims.
To find out
how the scam works, we replied to their e-mail. Here's the
catch: They said we would have to Western Union 495
eurodollars for a "processing fee".
The scam is
much worse than that. Evidently there are people who have
fallen for the scam and sent the 495 euros. In our research,
we discovered a web
site that gives complete details about it. The people who
sent the 495 euro "processing fee" were then asked to send
2650 euros for insurance and taxes on their "winnings".
It gets even
worse than that. The people who sent 2650 euros were told that
it covered insurance only and that they would still have to
pay another 2650 euros for taxes.
The moral of
the story: if you didn't enter a contest, then you didn't win!
There are no exceptions.
