I received a letter telling me I had won a lottery in Spain (El Gordo, Loteria Primitiva, which is a lottery run by the federal govnerment of Spain). The ticket number was 025-11-464-992-750 and the prize amount was US $615,810. The letter purported to be from a security company that wanted to transfer my winnnings to me but needed my bank account information to do so. The letter included a very fuzzy photocopy of what appeared to be a lottery ticket. The security company wanted a 10% fee in order to pay me the money, which right away sounds very suspicious. Why should they get $68,581 just to transfer my money to me? I would have immediately assumed it was a scam, but I happen to have a friend who lives in Spain so although I had never bought a Spanish lottery ticket, I wondered if my friend had bought one for me.
After a little research I discovered a website for the Spanish National Lottery in which they warn (in Spanish, of course) that a band of criminals has been running a scam where they tell people in countries other than Spain that they have won the Spanish lottery. They try to get the "winner" to pay a portion of the award to them, usually under the pretense that they have to pay income tax on the money.
Then I found usacomplaints.com and discovered other people had been told they won the same amount of money on the same lottery ticket. Thank you usacomplaints.com for confirming that this really was too good to be true!
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