It has been six months since David and Carol Martin, a Scottish couple, won the lottery jackpot of £33,035,323—the highest National Lottery pay out made to any winner to date. Yet it seems that all this time, the couple has been freely donating chunks of their winnings to random individuals around the world via email.
The Martins have never done this.
So if you find yourself staring at an email claiming that David and Carol Martin—or “the Martin Family” or “the Family of Martin”—have given out a dizzying amount of donation to you (when you didn’t ask for one) in exchange for your personal information, don’t get too excited. What you have there is a scam.
The Family of Martin has approved a donation of 0,000 to you, Kindly provide your, ============ Name: Age: Mobile/Tel: Sex: State: Country: ============ verify:www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-35297396The URL at the end of the message is the scammer’s feeble attempt at making the email more believable, as it banks on an actual news of the Martin’s winning the lottery.
Anti-Fraud International has a helpful thread exclusively for this specific 419 scam. Those who have encountered this spam post pertinent information, such as messages’ country of origins and email addresses of senders. You may also notice that, although the thread is meant for user awareness and sharing, there are still those who visit and ask how they can reply to these emails with their information.
We hope that you, dear Reader, would know better. Like we always say, if it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
Stay safe out there!
Other reference/s:
- Fraud FYI post on the David and Carol Martin scam
- Online Threat Alert’s (OTA) post on this Donation scam
Jovi Umawing
