Lottery scams
Some New Zealanders have received bogus emails notifying them they have won a lottery. The majority of these scams are either 'Dutch lottery' or 'Spanish lottery' schemes, though there are other variations, such as the 'Bill Gates lottery'. The theme is the same - you receive an email saying that you have won a lottery you have not entered and you need to reply to claim your winnings. If you reply, you will then receive emails, or sometimes phone calls and faxes that move you on to the next phase of the scam. They will then tell you that you need you to pay a fee - which can be several hundred NZ$ to cover 'transfer costs'. Sometimes they may need your bank account number to 'deposit your winnings'. So, in the end, you can end up giving them money and access to more funds from your account. They then disappear, throwing away their pre-pay mobile phone that they have been using to contact people, moving on to their next targets.
The obvious giveaway that these emails are fraudulent is that if you haven't bought a ticket, you are not going to win a lottery. But it is very tempting to think such scams could be true.
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