Loterie Nationale

Most of the time, spam emails just tick me off. My email address is public enough that it has been discovered by just about every purveyor of ripped email addresses, and as a consequence I get hundreds of these damned things every day. I use Thunderbird as my email client, and its built-in junk mail filters do a bang-up job — but still, a few get through every day. This morning I found this gem in my inbox, having escaped Thunderbird’s junk filters:

NOTIFICATION FROM THE LOTERIE NATIONALE

We are delighted to notify you of the result of the LOTERIE NATIONALE quarterly award program. In accordance with the world lottery ordnance, you authorized as an official lottery prize winner to immediately file in for your claims upon receipt of this mail.

This is an online promotional program organized by LOTERIE NATIONALE. A total number of various individual email addresses and companies alike were entered for the Free Lotto Automatic Subscription Ticket Game. Details were submitted by international email service providers/marketing companies including public service providers strictly for this exercise. No ticket was sold.

Bear in mind that prizes will strictly be remitted to winners that officially file in for their claims within the given time frame. To begin your claim process, you are advised to immediately contact our program coordinator with the details below.

MRS. JANET DAAL.

Global Consult

Tel: +31 [redacted]

Email: [redacted]@excite.it

Note that all winnings must be claimed within 10 working days from the date of this notification; any unclaimed prize will be returned to the treasury of the organizing firm as unclaimed prize.

(NB) You are to file in for the claim of Two Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($2,500,000.00) under category “A”. Here are your winning details:

Batch Number: LN-DN0TR764

Ticket Number: LN-TW09XV51

Ref Number: LN-883M09

Lucky Number: 554-20-501

Serial Number: LN/ERS

Congratulations once more and thank you for being part of our quarterly promotional program.

Yours truly,

KARL SCHOLTEN

The first thing that caught my eye — and what stopped me from deleting it immediately, as I usually would — was the phrase “world lottery ordnance”. Now I’m sure they really meant “world lottery ordinance", but the spelling they actually used raises all sorts of humorous questions. How, exactly, do you turn a “world lottery” into some kind of heavy weapon? Hmmmm… Perhaps you print a bazillion lottery tickets, pack them into a nice aerodynamic casing, and then drop them on some terrorist’s head? Hah!

The second paragraph is typical of these spams: a pathetic attempt to make a plausible case for why I should have been randomly selected to win $2.5M, in a way that benefits no company or government. And of course there’s the line calculated to build a sense of urgency: I have only 10 days to take action, or I’ll lose all this money!

You gotta love all the official sounding details, too. Not only do I get a ticket number, but also a batch number, a serial number, a reference number, and even a lucky number. Wow! This must be for real, with all that specific information on it!

I redacted the (Italian) email address and (Dutch) phone number, because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone actually contacting this scammer. I’m not sure what would happen if you did contact them, but most likely it would involve getting your bank or credit information — I can’t imagine what else they’d be after.

It never ceases to amaze me that such unsophisticated spams actually work — but they must, or nobody would go to the trouble of sending them off.

"World lottery ordnance”. Heh.