Financial News Hub

To many people, the lottery represents an opportunity to win money, in large or small amounts, in a legal, organized, even communally beneficial way. To others, it represents an opportunity to take advantage of people’s optimism and good will by scamming them in the name of a legal lottery.

Unfortunately, the UK National Lottery is no different from other organized lotteries in the world. Lottery players, and sometimes non-lottery players, need to educate themselves about the methods these scammers use. Scams are not difficult to spot if you know what to look for.

Take the email below, as an example. This is an actual email that has circulated among UK residents.

Fecha: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:54:55 +0000 (UTC De: “Uk National Lottery Inc.” info@uklottery.co.uk Asunto: Uk Lottery Winning Notification

UK-GAMING Headquarters:United Kingdom Customer Service Ref: 851125 Batch #: 09-18-21-24-37-48

To the receiver of this email,

This is to notify you that your email address was officially emerged and won the sum of GBP 650,000.00 ( Six Hundred An Fifty Thousand Pounds in the Online Uk Gaming Board Programme.

The award was held 24th March 2008 and results were released on 28th March 2008.

The winning numbers, Batch number: (UK 09-18-21-24-37-48) Serial

Number; 851125 and a bonus ball of (23).

All online participants was selected fro a data base on internet users from which your email address came out as the winning coupon.

In view of this, Your 650 000(Six Hundred & Fifty Thousand British pounds sterling) will be released to you by any of our payment offices in Europe.

Chose your mode of delivery

(1)BANK TRANSER(BANK TO BANK TRANSFER)

(2) COURIER DELIVERY (CERTIFIED CHEQUE MADE OUT IN YOUR NAME DELIVERED TO YOU VIA OUR AFFILIATE COURIER COMPANY)

For more information on how to redeem your prize, You are to reply with the information below as soon as you receive this notification.

CONTACT NAME: RYAN BOND

EMAIL: ukcliamsldt2@hotmail.co.uki

Tel:0 44 704 521 4521

INFORMATION FOR CLAIMS

1. Full Names: 2. Address: 3. Age: 4. Sex: 5. Marital Status: 6. Occupation: 7. Phone numbers: 8. Country:

Please note the following:

1All claims are nullified after 20 working days from today.

2Your Reference number must be in all your mails with the claims officer.

3Do inform the claims officer of any change of names or addresses.

4Please do not reply to this email. Contact your claims agent.

This international promotion is proudly sponsored by Yahoo! Inc. to encourage the use of the Internet and computers world wide.

We are proud to say that over 200 Million Pounds are won annually in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Yours Truly Graham Lewis

CO-ORDINATOR (ONLINE PROMO PROGRAMME)

This first thing that should raise your suspicions – if you did not buy a lottery ticket, you cannot win the lottery. If you did buy a ticket, it is your responsibility to match the number and notify the lottery that you won.

You WILL NOT be notified by email by any legitimate lottery that you won a prize. All emails claiming differently are scams. Do not reply to any of them.

Did you notice the horrible spelling, grammar and word usage in this email? All communication handled by the two large, legal lotteries in the UK, the National Lottery and the Monday Lottery, will be professionally written. And, again, it will NEVER be in the form of an email notifying you of winnings.

Some other things to know:

There is no such thing as a “computer ballot system” or “computer email draw.” There is no database of email addresses that can “win” you the lottery.

This scammer is asking you to reply to a free email account (hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) Proper business organizations use their own email, domain and website.

A real lottery will never ask you to keep quiet about your winnings. Publicizing winnings is one way the lotteries get more people to play.

If you think you’re being scammed, or have been scammed, contact the national lottery for help resolving the matter.

See who benefits from UK’s National Lottery. It allows citizens to join in raising money for local causes while buying a chance to win money for themselves. But their man focus is on winning, not contributing to the community.

28 per cent off all the money that goes into the lottery is given away to charities, totaling over 22 billion pounds so far. Most people in the United Kingdom live close to a lottery-funded amenity. Those who are chosen to receive lottery money must serve a charitable or socially beneficial function. The biggest contributor among UK lotteries is the Big Lottery Fund. It distributes most of the money raised by the lottery. There are many beneficial projects funded by the Big Lottery Fund in the fields of education, health, the environment and many others.

In addition, Good Causes have three specific categories: arts, sports and heritage. Each of these categories receives 16.67% of the Good Causes funds.

Group of four National arts councils and two film councils are Granted ,for funds awarded related to the arts and cinema.For example, a grant to the Yorkshire Film Archive will improve the accessibility of this highly popular collection of historical amateur and professional video via an online database,3m was granted to myfilms.com,high-quality website that will help individuals ,non-mainstream films from the past and present.

The lottery distribution entities, five in number, and the Big Lottery Fund disburse the funds to the sport category. Expenses for purchase of land, building and equipment and construction are met from the grant funds. Local community needs are fulfilled by these projects and it is also intention that the source of funding cannot be only from the lottery. The Inclusive Fitness Initiative is a project devised with this intention and is responsible for making facilities and services available to the many disables persons.

Thousands of heritage projects have been funded by the Heritage lottery fund since 1994. All-in-all, the fund has granted more than 39 billion. The preservation of United Kingdom heritage is the focus of these projects. This is done through many venues including natural heritage, museums, buildings, language or tradition. In Wales, The Archives Network was awarded 365,000. They used this to collect historic manuscripts, records and archives. These documents came from thirteen local governments, some universities and national institutions. They were put into an online site.

Go to the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport fo a total list of projects that are funded by the lottery.

There are two problems associated with a lottery that goes to a charitable cause. Opponents say masking it as a charity instead of gambling is a gimmick to get more people to play. While a good cause truly is a great marketing message, the money really does go to good causes.