My Name is James Stocklas (Senior District Judge ), the winner of the Powerball jackpot of 291,400,000 million in the March 02, 2016, My jackpot was a gift from God to me hence my Entire family has AGREED to do this. I am going to be donating 200,000.00 USD to you. Contact us via my email for further / full details and please accept this token as a gift from me and my family. Email me urgently kpxxxxx@yandex.com
Read More http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/05/us/brothers-win-lottery/
Best Regards,
Senior District Judge
(United State Of America)
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This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
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For me, this is clearly a scam. But am I mistaken? Not everyone will believe me, especially if they're naive or trusting or having a hard time, feeling vulnerable or suffering a bereavement. The reference to God is also a nice touch, perhaps a tactic used to get the sucker to empathise through religious loyalty.
The Avast reference at the bottom shows it has 'passed' an anti-virus or malware scan (this would actually make me more suspicious ;-)) but anyone could've written that in couldn't they?
Though we should NEVER CLICK RANDOM LINKS IN EMAILS, the CNN link is accurate – a quick search, with safe search engine StartPage, for 'James Stocklas' reveals he did in fact win the lottery...
Oh, could I be wrong? Am I just too cynical a bird?
LINK 1 Judge wins Lottery
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TIP 1 check the email's spelling & grammar
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OK, we have an offer of $200k from a Senior District judge. Judges know how to spell and punctuate, right? ;~)
We're writers – if we can't cast our eyes over a bit of prose, why are we here?
Let's take a look at the judge's email closely.
A case of capitalitis here and there:
My [N]ame is James Stocklas (Senior District Judge ), the winner of the Powerball jackpot of 291,400,000 million in the March 02, 2016, [M]y jackpot was a gift from God to me hence my [E]ntire family has AGREED to do this.
Commas are all wrong and 'in the March 02, 2016' what? The judge has left something out in his excitement, and he tells us what his family has AGREED to do in shouty caps.
I am going to be donating 200,000.00 USD to you. Contact us via my email for further / full details and please accept this token as a gift from me and my family. Email me urgently kpxxxxx@yandex.com
Oh goody. I can get my feathers preened by a top pigeon stylist, the best quality crumbs from now on and... wait a minute...
Best Regards,
Senior District Judge
(United State Of America)
Oh dear. I think a judge may know there is more than one state in America.
My crap detector is humming.
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TIP 2
Copy the first line of the email and put it in a safe search engine like DuckDuckGo
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We get this:
LINK 2 ~ Beware James Stocklas lottery donation scam (0 trackers)
What happens next is a series of demands for us to send 'processing fees', banking and transfer costs, insurance payments or taxes needed to pay before we can receive the prize..
And check this out:
My Name is Jeff Lindsay, the winner of the Powerball jackpot of $447 Million in the June 10, 2017, My jackpot was a gift from God to me hence my Entire family has AGREED to do this. I am going to be donating 2,000,000.00 USD to lucky you. Contact via my email for further / full details and please accept this token as a gift from me and my family. Email me urgently ( xxx@yandex.com)
Yep, it's a template although this guy is offering 2 million. Thousands of these things are sent every hour. Although only about 7 out of 500 scam emails receive an answer, they generate millions of dollars every year for the scammers. The biggest sucker nations are the US, the UK and India. These lottery scams mainly originate from Nigeria where experienced gangsters mount huge spamming operations, targeting thousands of email addresses, to trick greedy westerners.
They are known as 419 scams, after the Nigerian criminal statute against fraud. However, crooks in many other countries including Jamaica, Holland and Canada have repeated them. They are not just lottery scams; some offer shares in the untold riches of a long-lost deceased second cousin, a chance of receiving millions of dollars to help smuggle loot stolen by a corrupt Nigerian official (actually a money-laundering scam) or a date with a beautiful model. There are literally thousands of different scams like this. They are all lies.
Many of us will get one before February, especially if we have one email address for everything and advertise it everywhere online.
LINK 3 419 scams (8 trackers and 1 canvas fingerprint)
Next time I'll explain other ways to tell if our emails are scams.
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