International Lotter Disbursement Payments Office - Beijing

[RCH]

I have an elderly friend that received a registered letter from the above company in Beijing China. When you read the fine print it appears to be saying that they will register him into any number of sweepstakes, "contests or other prize opportunitie,s"... with the potential winnings of up to Euro50,000,000. They sent along a tear sheet that asked his persoanl details, ie bank account number and signature and possibly someother details that he did not relate. He filled it in and mailed it back to the Company at China Post PO Box 100102 Beijing Beijing, China. They asked for no money but state that they can debit his account for a "one time" fee.

I am sure that there is SCAM written all over this but to be fair I wanted to ask. If anyone has any information please advise. My advise to our friend is to close his accounts and open new ones....will this work? He is 80+ years old and obviously this would be quite a stress for him. Of course losing his life saving would trump that.

Thanks for your insights.

[Curious Nelly]

It is a scam. If he sent his bank details, contact the bank immediately and close / re-open the accounts. Tell your friend to delete the email. There is no company titled International Lotter Disbursement Payments Office and no Lotter Disbursement. Tell him to stop any communication with the email sender. You can pass the below information to your friend.

(a) You cannot win a lottery that you have never purchased a ticket for. Some emails say that you do not have to, but a Lottery by definition is a commercial enterprise that REQUIRES people to buy tickets in order for there to be any prize money. In short, they are lying.

(b) A fraudulent lottery will ask for a fee to allow your 'winnings' to be sent to you. In all cases it is this fee that is the scam. If you pay the money, you loose it forever, and they may come back and ask for more.

(c) Genuine organizations who purport to handle vast sums of money do not use free webmail providers such as yahoo, msn, hotmail etc. It is one of the ways the fraudsters can remain anonymous and untraceable.

{d}There is no such thing as winning a lottery based on your email address. (such as a computer ballot)

(e) Legitimate lotteries do not notify winners. It is the responsibility of the winner to notify the lottery.

You can find a lot of information right here about fake lotteries.

A brief description of Lottery Fraud is here:-
http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/...read.php?t=255

A more in-depth view of a Lottery Fraud is here:-
http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/...read.php?t=229

We have some Lottery Fraud example emails here:-
http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/...splay.php?f=39
ticket.

I also received such letter, (in France) from the same "international lottery disbursement payment office" (ILDPO), talking of the same amount (50 000 000€)...
OF COURSE this is a stupid FAKE ! I mean this is obvious... In this letter they didn't even ask me any account info (number, RIB etc)they just asked me to sign some paper where I accept that "E.B" (we don't know how that is) shall proceed the money transfert after I subscribe to something (we don't know what).
There's not even any single reason to imagine that this could be true...
Anyway if you send them any info about any account, close the account(s), cancel any action you engaged... This is my advice.

[RCH]

Thanks both for the comments. That was our advise to the gentlemen but at 82 some outside confirmation should be very useful. He did in fact transfer 24Euro off his Mastercard and then there was a piece of paper we never saw that he said he sighned....and who knows what other info he put on it.

We shall pass along your advise. Thanks again.