The Spanish Lottery Scam

The Spanish Lottery Scam, also dubbed as the “El Gordo” scam, or some other Spanish sounding name, poses itself as an international lottery. The victim is informed, either by mail or fax, that he or she has won huge sums of money in a sweepstakes in Spain. At first look, individuals desperate for a quick fix would find this appealing and might bite into it. However, when people start to think about how they had won in a lottery in Spain, the questions on its veracity begin to fly.

How To Detect A Spanish Lottery Scam

Three major ways:

1)    The letter telling you that you have won is either awkwardly written, with incorrect grammar and word usage, and has a phone number that is located somewhere else in the globe or that which starts with 011-34-6 (this can vary, of course). It may also contain legitimate sounding names, with legitimate sounding titles and addresses, but scam experts say that the Spanish normally write two last names when they address themselves, as opposed to the two first names scammers use.

2)   The so-called lottery is asking you for an advanced payment for taxes, claims agent fees, insurance fees, anti-terror fees, and some other kind of charge to hasten the processing of your winnings. When the victim confirms that he exists by verifying his winnings with the phone number provided, he will be asked for personal and account details, and then told that he has yet to pay certain advances because it is not easy to get money out of Spain and into the U.S. No legitimate lottery will ask you to pay anything in advance.

3)     You cannot win any kind of lottery if you did not buy a ticket in the first place.

Participating In Foreign Lotteries Is A Federal Crime

Under the U.S. Code Title 18, Section 1301, it is illegal for any U.S. citizen to participate and claim winnings in any foreign sweepstakes or lotteries; a violation of which would result in a fine of not more than US$250,000 and jail time of around 2 years. Thus, even if the Spanish Lottery were legitimate, the mere fact that you participated in it is a violation of the law.

In Spain, the only way a person can win a lottery is if he or she is a resident of that country and he or she had purchased a ticket while in Spain. There is no way you, a U.S. resident will be able to win any kind of lottery in Spain or anywhere else in the world if you did not willingly participate in it and if you do not legally qualify.
So when you are sent mail that says you are soon to be a millionaire, this should sound alarm bells in your head and prompt you to alert the FBI (or you can simply ignore the letter, if you want).

What To Do

As said earlier, you can choose to either alert the authorities (especially if you had already been victimized) or ignore the letter. Be aware that since you had willingly participated in a scheme that is run via illegal means across the globe, there is a very slim chance that you’ll be able to recover what you lost. In addition, when you receive this kind of notice and you’re already aware of what a Spanish Lottery scam is, don’t reply, not even out of anger. Replying will only signal that your email account is active and prompt other similar scammers and spam email senders to send promotional emails and whatever kinds of letters to you. Don’t give them a reason to proliferate.

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