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Fake Camelot Lottery EMail

I Won!

Here’s one that showed up this morning in my email. It appears that I have won the lottery! Interestingly, I have never bought a lottery ticket in my life. Nevertheless, it seems that I’ve won, over in… England?

Below is the email I received, with a little commentary.

The Camelot Group.
Operators of the National UK Lottery.
3b Olympic Way, Sefton Business Park,
Aintree, Watford , L30 1RD
REF N0: UKL/74-A0802742006
BATCH NO: 2006UKL-01

LOTTERY WINNING NOTICE

(so far it seems okay)

Congrats,

(Congrats?? That doesn’t sound so right… maybe there’s more stupid stuff down below! I’ll make some of the stupid stuff BOLD so you’ll catch it as you read.)

The United Kingdom National Lottery wishes to inform you that the results of the E-mail address of the ballot lottery international program(Bad Grammar) will be held five times every year. Your email account have been picked(Grammar, again) as a winner of a lump sum pay out of Eight hundred and Sixty Thousand Great Britain pounds(Upper Case Anyone?) (£ 860,000,00(How many zeros after that last comma?) pounds sterling) in cash credited to REF: UKL/74-A0802742006. This is from total prize money of GBP £4,459,670.00 shared among the FIVE (5) international winners in this category.
please(Caps?) quote your reference/batch numbers in any correspondences to our selected claim agent. Congratulations once more from all members and staffs(Staffs?) of this program, before(Comma or Period?) your claim agent could get this fund transferred into your account, He have to obtain(”he have to..”) a CERTIFICATE OF CLAIM AND INSURANCE CERTIFICATE from the Ministry of Justice of United Kingdom on your behalf; this is to certify you as original beneficiary(somebody died?) of the winning fund. Therefore we will need you to send him these Details listed bellow(spelling counts!) to obtain the Certificate and insurance of Claim and for the authentication of your fund documents into your name and as to enable you alone to have access to this fund in any of the bank account of your choice in your country.(That whole paragraph just reeks of WRONG)
Here are the details

Your REF N0
Your FILE BATCH NO
Your full name.
Your full address.
Your private telephone, mobile and fax numbers.
Your country of origin.
Your date of birth.
Your Occupation.
Your Sex.
Your Marital status.

(And there’s the stuff they really want. Stuff that let’s them take your identity..)

To begin your claim, please contact your claims agent :

Name : Mr DOUGLAS DUKE
Mobile: +447031821203
Email : douglasdukeagent@gmail.com

Congratulations again from all our staff and thank you for being part of our promotions program.
Sincerely,

Mrs. caroline owen,(No CAPS in names)
Online Coordinator,
CAMELOT GROUP,
Operator of the National Lottery.

Nuova grafica e nuove funzionalità! Crea subito Gratis la tua nuova Casella di Posta Katamail
Nuova grafica e nuove funzionalità! Crea subito Gratis la tua nuova Casella di Posta Katamail

(Shouldn’t the pc that sent this email about the British lottery include a footer in English?)

It impresses me that these guys even try. What impresses me more is that some people will fall for it. Applying a simple rule will always protect you from these types of scams. The rule? Look for the right grammar. If someone has risen to a position responsible for notifying the public about Anything, you can bet that person can apply the most basic grammatical rules to their correspondence. If there’s one mistake, my eyebrows are raised. If there’s more than one mistake, I know it’s a scam, regardless of anything else.

I am Jon, and that up there is a horribly crafted attempt to steal my identity, and maybe yours.