I’ve Won Another Microsoft Lottery!
Whoopee! I won 800,000 Euros in the latest lottery being run by Microsoft…..Imagine what I can do with that much money; buy a Ferrari [but I don’t drive, maybe I could learn?], pay off my mortgage, do a round-the-world trip, buy lots more spiders, snakes and guitars….Oh, and let my wife have some too! 
Hang on, I don’t remember entering any lottery!
OK, calm down, this isn’t all it seems to be, as usual.
Yes, hopefully by now you’ve realised that it is the latest incarnation of the infamous lottery scam from those wonderful 419ers. The boys and girls from Lagos have excelled themselves once more. Yes, as usual they are using the name of a large company; Microsoft [in this case] but are also using another company name, that of the F. P. S. which they claim is the ‘Foundation for the Promotion of Software products’ [which doesn’t seem to exist outside these scams]. They even go on to use ‘Bill Gates‘ name as if that will give it more credence.
Here are a couple of screenshots, showing the whole e-mail in all its glory:
Just to make it crystal clear, this is a scam, there is no money, and I haven’t really won anything, well, apart from the right to read the latest ‘fiction‘ from those running these scams.
Anyone know who the woman in the picture ‘really‘ is?
By the way, I think that F.P.S really stands for ‘Foolish People Scammers‘? Any better suggestions?
P.S. I have a number of postings planned already for next week, including the ‘Monthly Malware Review’ for October, an interesting case of a Phishing Scam, with an extra sting in its tail, and another update on the latest tricks being employed by the spammers. If anything else interesting or newworthy crops up I’ll try and post that too.
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ha! The woman in the black and white photo on my “winnings notification” said her name was Caro Smith!
Comment by Robin — Wednesday 2nd May, 2007 @ 13:06
This is very interesting because I to received an email exactly like this one. They went so far as to say that my money was deposited into SNS Bank and that they needed my personal information as well as a deposit of $645 in order for me to have access to my winnings of 800,000 euros.
Comment by Menyoun Eackles — Friday 14th September, 2007 @ 0:48