FraudWatch International warns Internet spending public of the escalation of scams circulating via email. These scams involve advance charge fraud, typically seen in Nigerian 419 scams, and acts as a method to gather personal information used for identity theft. In April FraudWatch International received over 1000 variations, double the number of phishing email scams received. Spending public are paying big smackers to have their bogus winnings released to them. Victims are contacting us all day asking for assistance to recover their lost bucks. She received an email from OY Keikkaus Lottery notifying her that her email address had won US$2. fiver 0. Grace claims, I was really excited then without considering the fact that I never joined any sweepstake lotto. I paid them US$2,000 for taxes and insurance and above receiving that amount they told me that its not enough and advised me to borrow dollars from friends or mortgage our property. I actually followed whatever they declared. I kept borrowing moulah to pay them until my brother pointed out typing errors in their correspondence. I searched the Internet and discovered FraudWatch Internationals site and thats how I discovered out this was a scam. I burst into tears when I discovered out because my effort and greenbacks had been wasted. I hope this may serve as a lesson to other parties.

Graces story is typical of the comments FraudWatch International receives from joe public who have lost dollars to these scams.

It begins with an email claiming the recipient has won a lotto. They are to contact a claims agent to collect their winnings, usually at a no charge email address. The unsuspecting buying public contacts the claims agent who sends a claim form to verify their identity. This is where the scam begins. The fraudsters now have enough information to duplicate the spenders identity.

The responding buying public receives an email with 3 options of how to collect their winnings. They can have the greenbacks wired to their bank account, they can open an account with a specified bank (bogus), or they can choose up their winnings personally (normally from Amsterdam). This involves upfront fees for taxes, insurance or even legal fees. If they do not want to pay upfront fees, they can open an World Web account with a specified bank, whos policy requires a deposit of around US$3,000. This bank is fake .