What is this Yahoo Beta Lottery Scheme & are they selected winners based on Computer Ballot System?

Question

This is the part of a mail which I have received from email "Yahoo Beta Lottery" [e-mail].

I have send my detail & after that I came a cross this was

something wrong. Here are some details. Please confirm me the real status of this. Is yahoo conducting any lottery system?

You have won a consolation cash prize of $300,000.00 (Three Hundred Thousand United State Dollars Only).The YAHOO BETA,MICROSOFT/

STAATSLOTERIJ Group have approved a payout of your consolation cash prize which will be remunerated directly to you by our Paying Bank your Agent will give you the Bank Contact.

Our DUE PROCESS UNIT (DPU) will render to you complete assistance and provide additional information and processes for the claims of your consolation prize. For due processing of your winning claim, please contact your claim Agent Rev.Father Jerry P.Anderson who has been assigned to assist you.

Your Payment Approval File was sent to Africa due to we have 5 lucky winners in Africa

Answer 1

Fake lottery scams fall under the category of Advance Fee Fraud because, to claim the (nonexistent) money, you must pay fees in advance.

Basically, scammers harvest e-mail addresses from all over the Internet and spam in-boxes with these "You've won the lottery!" e-mails. They're scams. Period.

In the example of the fake lottery, you will usually be asked to pay a "courier fee." This can be a few hundred dollars or more. But when you wire the money (the scammers prefer Western Union or Money Gram, as it's very difficult to trace these transactions), there will be another fee, or another excuse as to why you have not yet received the check.

You'll keep sending money until you either run out of money or realize that you've been scammed. Either way, there is little that can be done to recover the cash that you've sent to these con artists. They operate all over the world, so it's not likely that your local law-enforcement division would even have jurisdiction in the case.

The safest thing to do is to simply delete the e-mails. Some of these cases are under investigation, so reporting the scammer's e-mail address to the provider, which gets the account closed, might destroy an ongoing investigation.

Any time you receive a "You've won the lottery!" type of e-mail, ask yourself these questions. They'll help you confirm that the e-mail is a scam.

One: What e-mail provider is this person using? Real lottery commissions do not use GMail, Yahoo! Mail, or other free, Web-based e-mail accounts. And in your case: even though this pretends to be a Yahoo! Lottery type of thing, the scammer might be e-mailing you with a GMail account, or maybe an inbox.com address, or some other free, Web-based address.

Two: When did you buy the lottery ticket? If you don't play that lottery, then how can you win?

Three: Does the alleged lottery sponsor (Microsoft, Yahoo!, et cetera) have any information about this lottery on the official Web site? (Don't check whatever link that might be in the scam e-mail, as this can lead to any site. Go to the official Web site to look up information, if any exists, about this so-called lottery.)

Answer 2

Taint true.  You receive an unsolicited email, which states that you have won a major prize in an international lottery. Supposedly, your email address was collected online and attached to a random number that was subsequently entered in a draw for the lottery. In order to claim your prize, you are instructed to contact the official "agent" in charge of your case. You are also advised to keep the win confidential for "security reasons". This part of the scam is basically a random phishing expedition. If you respond in any way to the email, the scammers will send further messages or even contact you by phone in an attempt to draw you deeper into the scam.

You may be asked to provide banking details, a large amount of personal information, and copies of your driver's license and passport. Ostensibly, these requests are to prove your identity and facilitate the transfer of your winnings. However, if you comply with these requests, the scammers will have enough information to steal your identity.

Sooner or later, the scammers will request some sort of advance fee supposedly to cover administration, legal or delivery costs. At its core, this scam is just a reworking of the Nigerian loan fraud, in which scammers also eventually ask for upfront fees to facilitate the "deal". Like Nigerian scams, victims who do actually pay the requested fees will probably find that they receive continuing payment demands to cover "unexpected expenses". The requests for money will go on until the victim realizes what is happening or has no further money to send.

In some cases, the scammers give victims the option of opening an account at a particular bank as an alternative to paying upfront fees. However, this "bank" which is completely bogus, will insist on an initial deposit of $3000 as a requirement for opening the account. The fake bank will have a legitimate looking website to reinforce the scam. In other cases, the victim is given the option of travelling to an overseas destination and paying a cash fee to facilitate the release of the funds. However, any "winnings" released to the victim will be counterfeit and therefore worthless.

The details of the lottery scams vary regularly with regard to the name of the lottery itself, the country of origin, the sponsoring organization, the amount of the "prize" and other particulars. The scammers try to add a patina of legitimacy to their claims by mentioning real financial institutions, government departments or well-known companies. They may also provide links to slick looking, but fraudulent websites that are designed to back up information included in the scam emails. If the scammers are successful in establishing a dialogue with a potential victim, they may provide "proof" such as a scanned image of a supposed government official's ID and even photographs of the "winnings" in cash.

Complete list of SCAM e-mail addresses.

http://www.419baiter.com/_scam_emails/sc...

Answer 3

This is a SCAM. Check out the below link for confirmation of various email scams hitting the internet and how to report them.

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 thieving scumbags who send them.

Check out these sites for further information :

http://www.scambusters.com

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

Answer 4

Smells fishY...........SPAM