Congratulations You have won the UK Lottery

I just have to wonder, just how stupid some people think other people are. In the last year, I have probably received over a hundred emails informing me that I have:

1. Won the UK Lottery

2. Inherited money from strangers in Nigeria.

3 Been selected as a go between for an overseas Company.

Well, the list goes on, but I think you get the general idea.

How I, as an individual, have been so lucky I just don't know. I buy lottery tickets for the State Lottery almost every week and haven't won a blasted thing. Evidently I am a whole lot luckier in the UK, where I have never entered the Lottery. Maybe I should move there. Then perhaps I would win the Lottery here in the U.S. Maybe without even buying a ticket!

In fact, the latest notification I received mentioned the UK affiliate of a very well known American Banking Institution. Do I dare name them? Okay, you twisted my arm. CitiBank . I tell you this because I fowarded the email to their on- line address which was created to try to catch these Internet scamming vermin. In fact, for those of you that are as tired as I am of getting these messages, try fowarding the entire email to:

www.emailspoof@citigroup.com

Maybe if enough of us foward the offending spam emails to the proper individuals, some of these idiots may be caught. That does give me a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy! Why? Well, there are enough folks out there who apparently get sucked into these scams. If that were not so, then there would not be so many of these things floating around.

A little research goes a long way. If you receive one of these Lottery email scams, look to see if there is a familiar Institution named within the text. If there is, a simple search may turn up a particular place to foward the message so that professionals can try to track down the offenders. Every large corporation that has a Website has a "Contact Us" address. Send them whatever information you can. I am more than positive they will be very thankful for the information. After all, it may be a scam they are yet to be aware of.

The second group of fraudulent emails inform you that some long lost relative, or individual with the same last name as your own, has unexpectedly met their demise, and that there are just tons of money left behind for you to claim.

Of course it is a tragic story. Sometimes it is someone in the oil business, or an engineer, or some other professional shmuck who, along with their wife and two children were killed in either a tragic plane crash or automobile accident. (Just to cover all the bases, you are informed that the children were a boy and a girl.) I suppose this is appeal to your soft side and make you more apt to fall for the whole thing. I don't know. I just know it does not work on me, nor gain any sympathy. (Probably because I have seen these emails so many times I know them by heart!) But, again, there must be many who fall for it because they show up more and more.

Usually these terrible accidents happen in Nigeria or some remote corner of the world. Places I will never travel to because their pilots are not very competent and the drivers there really must suck.

Finally, there is the last category of scams I have received. These are the offers for employment from different companies which are just starting up in some foriegn region, whom, for one reason or another, want you to collect money for goods they, may or may not, sell. The main jist is simple. These companies seem to need representatives to take the money owed, deposit it into your account, and then foward the money to their account after subtracting 10% for yourself. (Oh yes. They allow you to take some of the money for being the middle man.) Pretty cool, huh? Yah, until you find out that there is nothing in your account left to subtract your 10% from.

All of these scams have a common thread. They all request your banking information. They want your banks routing number, your pin, your account numbers. They ask for your name, address, social security number, your phone number and just about any other information you can think of that will make their job easier to fleece an individual of every penny available.

So, the next time you see one of these things in your old email box, before marking it and sending it to Spam Limbo, look it over. See if there may be someone who may be interested in investigating it's source, and turn it over to them.

I am a realist, and I do know the probability of catching all those who start these things are slim to nill, but it dosen't hurt to try. These days it is hard enough to make a living without these parasites making it even harder. Lets try to turn the tables on these Internet conmen.

I'm just sayin.