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.
