The Austrailian National Lottery

Pick a country, any country, pick a large dollar amount, sooner or later you may receive a letter or email announcing that you have won the said country's national lottery/sweepstakes. My husband "won" $800,000.00 from Australia, and he never bought a ticket. WOW! We could sure use that money. And, in order to claim this money that Australia just wants to give away to non-Aussies, for no apparent reason, all he needs to do is send in some handling fees and taxes. Of course, common sense says that if he had sent in that money all he would have received in return would be a request for just a little bit more money to make the necessary transfer of cash possible, and then another similar request, and so on.

Too bad common sense isn't more common. This is a scam and many people do fall for it, otherwise the scam would disappear. My neighbour received a similar letter for another contest that she never entered and was tempted to reply, but she had that nagging feeling. She figured that if it were legitimate, she could just write a letter authorizing them to deduct the fees and taxes from the prize money and send her the revised cheque. She never got a response, and certainly no money (but at least she only lost a stamp).

Tip - if you didn't enter a contest and/or purchase a ticket, you didn't "win" a prize. Occassionally, you might receive a free prize ticket as part of a marketing ploy, but that is another ploy for another time.