Is Yahoo Internet Lottery authentic and legal?

Question

I received an email from James Walker on June 15, 2008 that I am one of the five winners of Yahoo Internet Lottery for the month of June. I was asked to provide some personal information to william sullivan, a fiduciary agent for the processing of my cheque.After sending him my personal info, I was to contact Nicolas Moore of Huddlerfield Courier Service to send me instructions on how to pay the corresponding 405 pounds insurance for sending the cheque to me.After receiving the email that I have to pay a total of 445 pounds to enable me to receive my cheque, I begin to doubt the authenticity of the lottery.

Answer 1

This is a SCAM. The below links confirm various email scams hitting the internet, including the famous Yahoo/MSN lottery scams and how to report them, using their online form - (with links for your own country) :

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/lo...

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/or...

Unscrupulous thieves have sent you this email and they are trying to part you from your hard earned cash. They will often ask you to call a premium rate number and keep you holding on whilst you rack up a huge phone bill. They are then paid a large proportion of this phone bill. They may ask you to divulge personal information about yourself or ask for your bank or credit card details. Do not divulge any such information under any circumstances. It is surprising how many innocent victims have been duped by these types of emails. Just remember the thieves who send them are very clever and extremely convincing. I suggest you delete the email and send it into cyberspace, hopefully along with the thieves who send them.

Check out these sites for further information :

http://www.scambusters.com

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

Answer 2

It is neither authentic or legal.

There is no such thing as the Yahoo! Lottery.  Yahoo! don't run any kind of lottery at all, period.

So any email you get claiming otherwise is a con trick.  And as far as I know, there is no lottery in the world that requires a winner to pay any kind of fee up front (other than the cost of a ticket).

Answer 3

no... it's all a scam, if you actually won money in a lottery u wouldn't be required to pay anything