equityinvestment.org.uk - Equity
Investment Limited Lottery Scam
Important note: this
page relates to a fake company set up by scammers under
the name of Equity Investment Limited, www.equityinvestment.org.uk
and NOT to any company of a similar name or with a similar
sounding website.
The Million Dollar Lottery Scam
Many people are familiar with the Nigerian 419 Advanced
Fee fraud, which normally starts with an email or letter
allegedly from an associate of a corrupt banker, government
official or army officer, offering millions of dollars
in return for your bank details and a release fee of
several thousand dollars up front. Dozens of people
every year fall for this scam, but many people are wary
of it.
For the past couple of years, there's been a twist
to this under the guise of a lottery win notification,
typically by email or sometimes by post, typically operated
from Amsterdam, and allegedly by expatriate Nigerians.
The basic pitch is this - the email or letter informs
you that you've won a sum of money, typically around
a million dollars, on some sort of global lottery and
that you have been picked at random to receive a prize
- but you must keep the win to youself. (Note the www.dayzers.nl
site mentioned appears to be an innocent party).
Return-Path:
<DAYZERSPROMOS@netscape.net> Received:
from unknown (HELO netscape588.com) (62.234.2.151) by
{munged} with SMTP; 14 Jul 2003 09:18:59 -0000 From:
DAYZERS GLOBAL LOTTERY <DAYZERSPROMOS@netscape.net> To:
{munged} Reply-To: dayzerslotto@netscape.net Subject:
CONGRATULATIONS! Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 11:19:15
+0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="a5d0c703-4a4c-4186-95a5-18b14089afb6"
DAYZERS
GLOBE PROMO LOTTERY KLANTENSERVICE DAYZERS POST
BUS 3313, 5902 RH VENLO, THE NETHERLANDS website:
www.dayzers.nl
FROM:
THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER, INTERNATIONAL
PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT, REF: DYL/
EKS255125600704 BATCH: 24/00319/IPD ATTENTION:
RE/ AWARD NOTIFICATION; FINAL NOTICE
We
are pleased to inform you of the announcement of winners
of the DAYZERS PROMO LOTTERY,THE NETHERLANDS/ INTERNATIONAL,
PROGRAMS held on 23rd June 2003.
You
are attached to ticket number 023-0148-790-459, with
serial number 5073-11 drew the lucky numbers
43-11-44- 37-10-43, and consequently won the
lottery in the 2nd category.
You
have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out
of US$1m (one million U.S dollars)in cash credited
to file REF NO. GLP/25041238013/02. This is from
total prize money of US$30,400,000.00 shared
among the seventeen international winners in
this category.
All
participants were selected through a computer
ballot system drawn from 25,000 names from Australia,
New Zealand, America, Europe, North America and
Asia as part of International Promotions Program, which
is conducted annually.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Your
fund is now deposited with a Bank in Amsterdam,
the nertherlands insured in your name. Due to
the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask
that you keep this award strictly from public notice
until your claim has been processed and your money
remitted to your account.
This
is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming
or unscrupulous acts by participants of this
program. We hope with a part of you prize, you
will participate in our end of year high stakes
US$1.1 billion International Lottery. To begin
your claim, please contact your claim agent;
Mr. Johan Owen, lnternational Service Manager, EQUITY
INVESTMENT CONSULTANT NETHERLAND, Email: JOHAN@CONSULTANT.COM
Or Telephone +31645172449 More info at (www.equityinvestment.org.uk}.
For
due processing, Notarization of claim and remittance
of your prize money to a designated account of
yourchoice. Remember, all prize money must be claimed
not later than 23th july 2003. After thisdate,
all funds will be returned as unclaimed.
NOTE:
In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications,
please remember to quote your reference and batch
numbers in every one of your orrespondences with
your agent.
Furthermore,
should there be any change of your address, do
inform your claims agent as soon as possible.
Congratulations
again from all our staff and thank you for being
part of our promotions program.
Sincerely, MR.
HANNS VAN HOEVEN THE PROMOTIONAL MANAGER, DAYZERS
GLOBE PROMO LOTTERY,THE NERTHERLANDS. N.B.
Any breach of confidentiality on the part of the winners
will result to disqualification. THANK YOU
AND SORRY FOR THE LATE INFORMATION.
Too Good To Be True?
This seems to be too good to be true - simply, because
it isn't true. But the twist on this one is that
it backs it up with a reference to the website of a
bank which is supposed to handle the transaction. Although
different scams use different sites, they all tend to
be very low quality. This particular one is called www.equityinvestment.org.uk
and anyone reasonable skilled with a decent
search engine can track down the original sources for
all the text and images and easily prove that it's a
fake.
There are other sites, such as "Fortune Trust
and Securities" - www.fortunetrust.com -
and Brabant International - www.brabant-international.com
- which are similarly faked and are exposed in this
article in The Register.
Things to Look Out For
The quality of a site doesn't necessarily indicate
if the institution is bogus or not. Although no financial
institution would have a site made up of such ill-fitting
and clearly ripped-off elements such as those listed
here, it's quite possible that future sites will be
more convincing.
Taking "Equity Investment" as a case study,
under their "Legal" page it claims that its
details are:
Equity Investment Limited. Registered Office: 4 PATER NOSTER ROW, ST. PAULS,
LONDON EC3M, UNITED KINGDOM. Company Number: 3263713. Registered in England.
Quite apart from errors in the address, such as the
road name and postal/zip code, the biggest give away
is the "Company Number". All UK companies
are registered at Companies House,
where you can search for company details using this
form (0700 - midnight UK time). A search for the
company number 3263713 gives:
ALLIANCE & LEICESTER PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY
|
CARLTON PARK NARBOROUGH LEICESTER LE19 0AL
|
The Alliance & Leicester is a UK bank
which is in no way related to this fraud, except that
the fraudsters use its company number, and also steals
some of the text and images from their web sites.
You can use the same form to look for Equity Investment
Limited - this shows a number of similar sounding
companies, but none is an identical match and all have
different addresses.
You can also use BT
Directory Enquiries to look for details (pick London
as the town), and you'll find no match there either.
If the company is Netherlands-based, you can do a
similar telephone number lookup here
- "Naam" is company name, "Woonplats"
is place and then just click "Zoeken"
to search. You can also search for companies registered
in the Netherlands here
- so with a little persistence you can find out if the
company you are dealing with is bogus or not.
Never Deal With Spammers
The bottom line is this.. never deal with spammers.
Nobody is going to email you at random with the offer
of a million dollars.
Other Resouces
|