‘Google Anniversary’ Advance Fee Scam Email
The original site is no longer online; links go to the Internet Archive copy.
The claim
Oakfield Road, Moss Ln
HULL, HU6 7RX
United Kingdom.
Winning No: GOUK/7828/2018
Ticket No: GOUK/7828/2018
Notification: 2018 GOOGLE ANNIVERSARY WINNING NOTIFICATIONWe wish to congratulate you on this note, for being part of our
selected winners in our just concluded internal promotion draw this year, this promotion was set-up to encourage the active users of the Google search engine and the Google ancillary services.Hence we do believe with your winning prize, you will continue to be an active patronage to the Google search engine and services. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, we ran an online e-mail beta draw which your email address won Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling ( £950,000.00). We wish to formally announce to you that you have successfully passed the requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report Test conducted for all online winners.
A winning check will be issued in your name by Google Promotion Award;
for the sum of Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling ( £950,000.00) and also a certificate of prize claims will be sent alongside your winning check cashable at any bank.
You are advised to contact your Foreign Transfer Manager with the following details to avoid unnecessary delay and complications:
VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM
(1) Your Contact Address/Private Email Address.
(2) Your Tel/Fax Numbers.
(3) Your Nationality/Country.
(4) Your Full Name.
(5) Occupation/Company.
(6) Age/Gender.
(7) Ever Won An Online Lottery?
Paul Buchheit (Program Coordinator)
Email: paulbuchheit2018@gmail.com
Mode of Price Remittance
*Cash Pick-Up (You as the Beneficiary coming down to the United Kingdom to receive your Award Personally).
*Courier Delivery of your Certified Winning Cheque in your Name and other Winning Documents safely to you.
The Google Promotion Award Team has discovered a huge number of double claims due to winners informing close friends relatives and third parties about their winning and also sharing their pin numbers. As a result of this, these friends try to claim the lottery on behalf of the real winners.
The Google Promotion Award Team has reached a decision from its headquarters that any double claim discovered by the Lottery Board will result to the canceling of that particular winning, leading to a loss for both the double claimer and the real winner, as it is taken that the real winner was the informer to the double claimer about the lottery. So you are hereby strongly advised once more to keep your winnings strictly confidential until you claim your prize.
Congratulations from the Staffs & Members of the Google interactive Lotteries Board Commission.
Yours faithfully,
Lawrence Page
Co-founder of Google™
What the fact-checkers found
According to this email, which is supposedly a Google Anniversary Winning Notification, you have won £950,000 in the Google Promotion for 2018.
The email urges you to contact your “Foreign Transfer Manager” to arrange the release of your prize money.
However, the email is an advance fee scam designed to trick you into sending your money and personal details to criminals. It is not from Google and there is no prize money. In fact, you have won nothing at all.
If you fall for the ruse and contact the “Foreign Transfer Manager” as instructed, you will soon be asked to send money to cover various fees supposedly associated with the processing of your prize claim. Like the prize itself, these fees are imaginary. If you do send money, you will likely be told that you must now send even more money to pay more fictional costs. These requests for money will likely continue until you run out of funds and finally realize that you are being scammed.
At that point, the criminals will simply disappear with your money and you will no longer be able to contact them. And, alas, it is highly unlikely that you will ever get any of your money back. Nor, of course, will you ever get the promised prize money, which never existed in the first place.
Moreover, during the course of the scam, the criminal may have managed to trick you into supplying a large amount of your personal and financial information, ostensibly to allow transfer of your funds and validate your claim. They may later use this information to steal your identity.
Versions of these Google Anniversary lottery scam emails are distributed just about every year. And, advance fee scammers use many other cover stories and pretend to be associated with many other high-profile companies.
Be wary of any message that claims that you have won a large sum of money in a lottery or promotion that you never entered and know nothing about.
Read more about Advance Fee Lottery Scams
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