EuroMillions warning
Saturday September 12th 2009It was not so long ago that we warned our readers of the climb in lottery scams. But it seems that victims of such scams are keen to send out warnings too. Sandra Gray, who is a pensioner from Bolton, sends out a EuroMillions warning for people to be wary of what she concludes, is a lottery scam.
Sandra was surprised to a receive a letter in the post saying that she had won £220,000 as one of 20 winners in the EuroMillions lottery 2010 World Cup Bid international programme. The letter, which was apparently from a company in Zurich, asked her to fill in a form to claim her EuroMillions Lottery prize, but Sandra became suspicious when she saw that the claim form requested her to reveal banking details and other personal information.
Sandra reported the letter to the West Yorkshire Trading Standards who say, “if something arrives out of blue, requesting personal information such as bank details, then it is almost definitely a scam”.
A spokesman for Camelot, who operate the UK National Lottery and EuroMillions in the UK, has said, the UK National Lottery never informs people of a win either by email, telephone or letter and we do not ask for any fees up front or personal information”.
As always we can only repeat past advice, which is to buy lottery tickets online whenever possible to help prevent false claims and lost tickets and if you are ever in doubt as to whether a notification of a National Lottery or EuroMillions win is genuine or not, please contact your local Trading Standards office or the National Lottery helpline on 0845 9100000.