This one received a few minutes back looked very genuine and was quite tempting. The message read:

Congrats:You have won £1000000GBP.Your mobile No.was attached to Lottery No 02 03 17 23 40 BONUS 43 of draw no. 1610 in BBC National LOTTERY UK.Send Name,Address Phone And Bank Details Contact Dr.Franklin on Email:bbcmobileresult2011@live.com Visit our web site on www.bbc.co.uk/lottery/

What is most surprising is that if you were to go to the website, you will indeed arrive on the UK’s National Lottery which is broadcast on BBC (BBC does not coduct the lottery, the Govt. of UK does).

Also on the page, you will see the results of the Draw # 1610 and the numbers in your SMS will match (almost).

So why is it a fake: 

• The SMS started with the message SMSCaster.com, indicating that the message was sent using a personal mobile phone and software on PC and not using an enterprise SMS system.
• The sender of the SMS is quite stupid and his mobile phone number (+91 8447175421) was captured in the SMS. I hope that some person in India connected to the legal system takes a note of this post and takes suitable action by tracing the owner of the mobile phone number.
• The next words on SMS were BBC UK. BBC is a publicly funded company in UK and it dare not waste public money by conducting lotteries. Or it is public boots for them too. They are supposed to be in the business of creating Radio/TV programs for upliftment of people, not scatter largess among the masses. Largess that was acquired by annually taxing people for owning TV in UK (you heard me right folks, you have pay tax in UK for owning a TV).
• Note the horrible grammar in the message. Arbitrary use of Uppercase, Full-stops, Colon symbols, how the Pound symbol (£) and GBP are used simultaneously.
• Note that you are supposed to send your contact details to one “Dr.” Franklin on a hotmail email ID (Live.com is an alias to the Hotmail service by Microsoft) that was probably created minutes before the SMS was sent (definitely in 2011, by sender’s own admission).
• And finally note that you did not actually play the lottery and you do not have the “golden ticket” to prove that you did. Thousands of people like you are going to receive the same SMS, read the numbers on BBC’s website and be under the mistaken impression that you won.

Here is an article in Indian Express which highlights the pity of a Gentleman from Andhra Pradesh who lost 18 Lakhs to such an SMS Scam.

Steer Clear Folks!

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