Jamaican Lottery Scam
Beware the Jamaican Based Lottery Scam
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) have issued a warning to the public making them aware of a new Jamaican based lottery scam, in which some UK residents have already lost thousands of pounds each.
Based in Jamaica, the fraudulent telemarketers’ MO (method of operation) is to make an unsolicited telephone call to a consumer in the UK, advising they have won up to £2.5 million in a sweepstake or lottery. The scammers attempt to deceive the victim by pretending to be lottery representatives, customs officers, lawyers or bank officials in an attempt to convince the victim their win is genuine.
The “sting in the tail,” however, is when the victim is advised that, to release their winnings, money must be sent in advance to cover the cost of local taxes, processing fees, insurance or customs duties.
However, the scammers do not stop there, even if the victim pays up, as there are often repeated calls for further sums of money. In some cases, the elderly victim has been threatened with violence, arrest and deportation to Jamaica if they do not pay up, and these scammers have in some instances pressurised their elderly victims to send their entire life savings, which ends up in the hands of organised gangs, in order to fund serious crime in Jamaica.
Source acknowledged with thanks, Google News/Essex Trading Standards, 3rd January 2010
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