GlobalLottos.com

My experience of Global Lottos has led me to conclude that it is a thoroughly unscrupulous company whose operations need to be investigated by the police. I would strongly advise AGAINST anyone buying lottery tickets from these people. I would also urge those with elderly and/or vulnerable relatives to take steps to prevent them from being contacted by Global Lottos sales staff who could talk them into parting with their savings.

This is the company that is registered in Malta but whose telephone-sales operatives actually work from an office in Vancouver, Canada.

I discovered that my elderly father had been ‘cold-called’ by this company many times over a period of about three years before his death in 2019. The same person always called and built up a rapport with my father over that time. During these calls, the Global Lottos salesman often managed to persuade him to part with a few hundred Euros, sometimes more than 1,000 Euros. I have calculated that, by the time he died, my father had paid out around 14,000 Euros in total.

No contract, or terms and conditions on paper, were ever delivered in the post to my father. All he would receive from Global Lottos were very long lists of lottery numbers which he had allegedly been allocated, along with the draws that he had apparently been entered for. This information would be sent on Global Lottos letter-headed paper which was color-photocopier-printed on poor-quality paper using ink that was often beginning to blur. It looked unprofessional as if you or I could have printed the same sort of thing at home. It is impossible to know from the information provided by Global Lottos if the lottery numbers were even real and that my father had actually been entered into the draws.

My father’s (apparent) winnings were small and infrequent and, from reviewing his bank statements, it doesn’t appear that he ever received them. I think the Global Lottos salesman, whom my father regarded as something of a friend by this stage, persuaded him to re-invest them in new lottery tickets but, as usual, no written confirmation of this agreement having been made during the phone calls was ever delivered in the post from Global Lottos.

Nor did my father receive from Global Lottos the actual receipts from the individual lottery companies which would have been proof that his money had actually been spent on real lottery tickets. Hence I am left wondering if Global Lottos simply pocketed my father’s money and just pretended that it had been spent on lottery tickets.

Like many other elderly people, my father did not have access to the internet so he could not access reviews such as this one nor could he view any terms and conditions on the Global Lottos website, assuming that they even existed at the time. In short, he was a ‘sitting duck’ for a company such as this one. It is simply too easy to talk elderly people, whose decision-making is compromised either by illness or old age or isolation, into handing their credit card details to a persuasive and persistent salesman who calls up in the middle of a long afternoon every few weeks or so and who, in the nicest possible way, just won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Even after my father had confided to the Global Lottos employee that he was becoming ill, the salesman continued to call and my father kept paying up. On one occasion when he rang and I happened to be in the house and answered the phone, he heard my voice and just hung up.

When I finally stepped in, rang the Global Lottos offices, and told the specific salesman to stop calling, he fobbed me off and, after an extended break of a few weeks, continued calling my father’s number anyway. Clearly, I was just an inconvenient obstacle to Global Lottos getting their money and to him getting his commission.

In my opinion, Global Lottos knew what they were doing all along the way. I think they targeted my elderly father and ‘groomed’ him with the objective of stripping him of a lot of money which they succeeded in doing. They should be thoroughly ashamed of what they did to my father in his dying days. I would guess that they don’t really care and are continuing to exploit many other elderly and vulnerable people. Perhaps part of the problem rests with the law not being sufficiently robust especially across national boundaries.

Please, therefore, take heed of these bad experiences and protect yourselves, and those close to you who may be vulnerable, from this company without a conscience. You have been warned!