Total money lost $3,400
Type of a scam Sweepstakes/Lottery/Prizes
A company called "Power-Ball Lottery Claim Agent Center" is friending people and then saying that they won millions of dollars and that they noticed that they saw your name on the sweepstakes winning list – they give the link and the person can follow it to see their name saying they won 1.7 million dollars. When a person follows up on it they are contacted by an agent that confirms that you have won and now you have to pay a bunch of fees to receive the prize (insurance fees $1850, certificate fees $1650, $800 UPS delivery, and $3000 for Dumudill Shipping Company to deliver and insure the parcel)
To convince the "winner" they have someone on their facebook friends list say they have received their money by following all the steps and offer to help pay some of the charges if you can’t afford all of it … The agent stays in contact by email and facebook messenger and phone calls to persuade you to keep making payments. They don’t provide receipts for any of the payments.
This is the message I received saying that I won "This is From the federal government all Facebook email addresses were selected through a computer ballot system in which your Facebook email address was selected as one of the lucky winners lottery commission worldwide. We embarked on a worldwide promotion a sophisticated automated database to randomly select E-mail accounts that
frequently surf the Internet.consequent upon this, your SN was picked for Category A Winners, you have been selected a winner of $1.7 millions from us,To claim you will need to fill this form"
They wanted the money sent to:
Receiver Name: Abdul adedoyin sofola
Country: Nigeria
State: lagos
City: isolo
Zip Code: 23401
Text Question: How are you doing?
Text Answer: fine
Later they said there email was: [email protected]