Elderly lose savings in Lottery scam

Last Updated: Thursday 7th July 2011, 15:57

We have more news of a lottery scam that has targeted the elderly and meant they have lost their life savings. The new Jamaican based lottery scam has seen many people in the UK lost thousands of pounds according to the Office of Fair trading recently. Originally a scam running in the US, costing residents millions this scam has now made its way to us in the UK and prewarned is forearmed so here are the details.

Many lottery scams are email or letter based but this particular scam is telephone based, making it even more convincing and intimidating for the elderly victims of the scam. Many victims have received phone calls from operators claiming to be the lawyers or bank officials of lottery operators and were told that they needed to pay fees to release their lottery winnings.

If victims didn’t fall for the scam, many were intimidated and threatened with violence if they did not pay up.

It is estimated that around £20 million has already been lost by victims making the scammers the only lottery winners in this situation, the scam has been running in America for a while but now reports are coming through of UK residents being targeted by this scam.

A genuine lottery would never ask anyone to pay any taxes or fees but of course common sense should tell you that a genuine lottery would actually need you to buy lottery tickets, if you haven’t bought tickets then you cannot possibly be a lottery winner.

Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that however, as many of the victims are very elderly. In one case a 79 year old woman from Warwickshire handed over around £3,000 in fees to claim her £2.5 million lottery ‘prize’, she called the police after being threatened with deportation to Jamaica.

Be aware and be sensible, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is!

Written by Chris Brown

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