I got a mail to win DV lottery?

by YanivG

Question by tumiami: I got a mail to win DV lottery?
I got a mail from usagov.state.dv@post.com that ensure that I won the DV lottery and tell that sent $ 880 money. i also sent some mail which was given In this mail but they also ensure that I won the lottery I don’t understand is it scram or not. There is no other application from just say that sent money by western union in UK USA embassy address. The person sent the money is Anthony Zarak.They don’t tell that which Dv lottery I win 2011 or 2012. The most confusing thing is that the mail posted on 10/03/2011 and tells me that within 25 march2011, I will pay the money. On the other side they said that if any inquiry need contact this email address usagov.state.dv@usa.com.

Best answer:

Answer by Buffy Staffordshire
100% scam.

While there is a USAFIS green card diversity (DV) lottery, that email did NOT come from the US government.

The US government uses “dot gov” email addresses NOT “usa.com”, NOT “yahoo.com” or anything else.

The US government notifies winners via US snail mail by sending paperwork to their home address NEVER via email.

The US government accepts payment in person at very specific locations NOT cash sent anonymously to someone in another country.

The next email will be from another of the scammer’s fake names and free email addresses and will contain a list of made-up fees to be paid in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram.

Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.

Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his ‘potential sucker’ list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.

Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don’t bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn’t worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.

Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.

If you google “fake green card lottery”, “fraud diversity DV lottery scam” or something similar you will find hundreds of posts of victims and near-victims of this type of scam.