Google Lotto Scam — How to Identify a Phishing Email?

Google Lotto Scam Exposed

We’re all aware that whilst most lottery games are fair and above board, there are some people who will always take a chance and try to con people out of money with very legitimate-looking scams. Google has fallen foul of this in recent years, so here are all the facts you need to know about Google Lotto Scams and what you can do to spot and avoid them.

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Google Lotto Scam

The most popular one of the lot may well appear in your email inbox. You’ll receive an email telling you that you’ve won the Google Lottery and within it, they’ll ask you to send over personal details.

There have been some cases reported in which scammers will even try to impersonate tax officials or people from the Customs Offices, and in their communications ask you to give extra information and pay them some cash to “release the funds”.

What you need to know is that Google does NOT run any lottery schemes. Your email address has more than likely been picked at random and you should never reply – or send any personal details to anyone offering this service.

Google suggests that if you’ve been contacted in this way, you contact them immediately, forwarding the email and any other information.

Here’s a pictorial example of the kind of email content you might receive. It helps to look at this so you know what you’re looking out for and what to report.

Google Lotto Scam

Image courtesy of Google

Here Are Some Other Examples of Google Lotto Scam Communications

You may receive an email message with text that looks similar to this – or is a direct carbon copy:

GOOGLE EMAIL LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL

FROM: INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION / PRIZE AWARD .

PROMOTING INTERNET USAGE OVER THE GLOBE

( WE ENCOURAGE GLOBALIZATION)

FROM: THE LOTTERY COORDINATOR,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT GOOGLE B.V. Boeing Avenue 44 9459 PE.

RESULTS FOR CATEGORY “A” DRAWS

Congratulations to you as we bring to your notice, the results of the First Category draws of GOOGLE LOTTERY INT. We are happy to inform you that you have emerged a winner under the First Category, which is part of our promotional draws. The draws were held on 28th January 2005 and results are being officially announced friday 11th of Febuary 2005. Participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 2,500,000 email addresses of individuals and companies from Africa, America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East, and Oceania as part of our International Promotions Program.

Your e-mail address, attached to ticket number 50941465206-529, with serial number 5772-54 drew the lucky numbers 3-4-17-28-35-44 and consequently won in the First Category. You have therefore been awarded a lump sum pay out of 1,000,000 euros (One million euros), which is the winning payout for Category A winners. This is from the total prize money from 2,000,000 euros shared among the 2 winners in this category.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Your fund is now deposited with the paying Bank. In your best interest to aviod mix up of numbers and names of any kind, we request that you keep the entire details of your award strictly from public notice until the process of transferring your claims has been completed, and your funds remitted to your account. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants/non participants of this program.

Please contact your claims agent immediately for due processing and remittance of your prize money to a designated account of your choice:

To file for your claim,please contact the fiduciary agent.

***********************************************

Mr.David Steevenson,
Proof Trust Agency
0030-699-769-2793
Email:prooflottery@latinmail.com
Sintagma 113
10435 Athens
GREECE.

***********************************************

You are advised to contact the agents by email.

NOTE: For easy reference and identification, find below your reference and Batch numbers. Remember to quote these numbers in every one of your correspondence with your claims agent.
REFERENCE NUMBER: LSLUK/2031/8161/04
BATCH NUMBER: 14/011/IPD

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

Sincerely Yours,
MRS.ELIZABETH MOUS.
PROGRAM CORDINATOR.

—————————————-

If you have received anything that looks like the above, do not reply. Send the details to Google and report them. Do not enter into any communication with them at all and send the email to your junk folder, after you’ve also reported it to your internet and email provider.

A Further Example of Google Lotto Scam Email Content

Here is one further example. Please also note that invariably, the emails will be littered with factual inaccuracies, spelling mistakes, bad grammar, and inconsistencies, as well as potentially harmful hyperlinks.

The Google Promotion Award Team collects the E-mail ID of all active users online, among the people that subscribed to GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE, GOOGLEMAIL, YAHOOMAIL, MSN, HOTMAIL, AOL, REDIFFMAIL, ALTAVISTA, BIGPOND, FACEBOOK and all the social networks online, among the billions users that subscribe to internet in which your email ID emerged as one of the lucky winners that won £500,000.00 {Five Hundred Thousand Great Britain Pounds Sterling} through electronic balloting system without the winner applying, we are congratulating you for having been one of the lucky people that won for this month.

A winning cheque of £500,000.00 {Five Hundred Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling} will be issued on your name by our fiduciary agent, and also a certificate of prize claims will be sent alongside your winning cheque. Note that all winners cheque are certified international bank draft,and when delivered and received by you, you can deposit and cash it in any bank of your choice without any delay.

To claim your won prize, please contact the Google Award claims Fiduciary Agent (Mr Grahams Benfield) neatly filling the verification details below.

GOOGLE AWARD CLAIMS FIDUCIARY AGENT

Mr Grahams Benfield

Contact Email: (oxford.anouncer@googlemail.com <mailto:oxford.anouncer@googlemail.com> )

Kindly forward your verification details as stated below to the Fiduciary Agent;

1. Full Name:

2. House Address:

3. Occupation:

4. Sex:

5. Age:

6. Marital Status:

7. Direct Phone No:

8. Country:

9. Ticket Number: 00869575733664

10.  Serial Number: BTD/8070447706/06

11. Lucky Number: 12-12-23-35-40-41(12)

Google values your right to privacy! Your information is 100% secured and will be used exclusively for the purpose of this award only.

Please do not reply if you are NOT the owner of this Email-ID. Congratulations from the Staffs & Members of Google Board Commission.

Note that this email can’t receive replies, so kindly forward your verification details as requested via email to our Fiduciary Agent as stated above (oxford.anouncer@googlemail.com ).

Mrs. Charlene Richards.

Promotion Award Manager.

C2017 Google Corporation.

Website: http://google.org/

We cannot stress enough. Please don’t reply. There is no prize, so please do not send your hard-earned money to the cybercriminals behind the lottery scam. If you send your personal information, these cybercriminals will use it to further scam you. If in any doubt, report these people to the relevant authorities as well as Google themselves.

  1. Hahahaa! Such a scam I got in my mail,….
    YOUR EMAIL-ID HAS WON YOU £500,000.00
    Yahoo
    /
    Spam

    Google Promotion
    Bcc:
    hdunant2002 @yahoo.com

    Tue, Mar 29 at 6:02 PM

    For your security we disabled links in this email. If you believe it is safe to use, mark this message as not spam.
    Google Promotion Award Department
    Belgrave House
    76 Buckingham Palace Road
    London SW1W9TQ
    United Kingdom.

    2022 GOOGLE ANNIVERSARY.

    Dear Email User,
    Your e-mail ID has emerged as a winner of £500,000.00 (Five hundred thousand Great Britain Pounds Sterling) in our on-going Google Promotion Award. We wish to congratulate you once again on this note, for being part of our winners selected this year. This promotion was set-up to encourage the active users of the Google search engine, the Google ancillary services, support fraud victims, support widows, covid-19 pandemic support, uplift poverty alleviation, charity aid, community development, improve the level of education worldwide, encourage the use of Internet and computers worldwide for vast knowledge and also increase the standard of living of the less privileged. Hence, we do believe that with your winning prize, you will continue to be active and patronage to the Google search engine. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and, in an effort, to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine.

    The Google Promotion Award Team collects the E-mail ID of all active users online, among the people that subscribed to GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE, GOOGLEMAIL, YAHOOMAIL, MSN, HOTMAIL, AOL, REDIFFMAIL, ALTAVISTA, BIGPOND, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM and all the social networks online, among the billions users that subscribe to internet in which your email ID emerged as one of the lucky winners that won GBP500,000.00 {Five Hundred Thousand Great Britain Pounds Sterling} through electronic balloting system without the winner applying, we are congratulating you for been one of the lucky people that won for this month.

    A winning cheque of GBP£500,000.00 {Five Hundred Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling} will be issued on your name by our fiduciary agent, and also a certificate of prize claims will be sent alongside your winning cheque. Note that all winner’s cheque are certified international bank draft, and when delivered and received by you, you can deposit and cash it in any bank of your choice without any delay.

    To claim your won prize, please contact the Google Award claims Fiduciary Agent (Mr Grahams Benfield)
    neatly filling the verification details below.

    GOOGLE AWARD CLAIMS FIDUCIARY AGENT
    Mr Grahams Benfield
    Contact Email: info.fpaycenter @gmail.com

    Kindly forward your verification details as stated below to the Google Fiduciary Agent;
    1. Full Name:
    2. House Address:
    3. Occupation:
    4. Sex:
    5. Age:
    6. Marital Status:
    7. Direct Phone No:
    8. Country:
    9. Ticket Number: 00869575733664
    10. Serial Number: BTD/8070447706/06
    11.Lucky Number: 12-12-23-35-40-41(12)

    The Google Promotion Award Team has discovered a huge number of double claims due to winners informing close friends, relatives and third parties about their winning and also sharing their pin numbers. As a result of this, these friends try to claim the lottery on-behalf of the real winners. The Google Promotion Award Team has reached a decision that any double claim discovered by the Lottery Board will result in the cancellation of that particular winning, making a loss for both the double claimer and the real winner, as it is taken that the real winner was the informer to the double claimer about the lottery. So, you are hereby strongly advised once more to keep your winning information strictly confidential until you claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program.

    Congratulations from the Staff & Members of Google Board Commission.

    Mrs. Charlene Richards.
    Promotion Award Manager.
    C2022 Google Corporation.

    00
  2. Received exact same email.
    Insane.
    Thinking we are idiots.
    I work for Crime Intelligence in the SAPS.
    Google should really do something.

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  3. I received the same message too. How can I stop this crap?

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  4. I’ve received the same email today.
    Thank u for following up with those scammers.

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  5. I have also received this in my email. and I want to know how they can use google email address? I received an email from this address (info@google.com) Could you please help how I can inform Google about this?

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  6. I have today received exactly that e-mail and will now ‘bin’ it. Thank you for bringing this scam to my attention. Disappointing, but rather disappointed than scammed! Well done Google.

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  7. I have also received this on my email that my number was randomly selected. Thanks for info on scams

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