One of the common tactics of cybercriminals in online lottery scams is the use of the names of real gambling winners.
Security experts have found that many scams circulate on the internet that are based on sending email messages, using the names of various people who have won the lottery, to make the content of the deceptive messages more credible.
For example, Kaspersky researchers have identified an email scam using the names of Adrian and Gillian Bayford, who won £148 million on the lottery in August 2012, Gareth and Catherine Bull, who won in January 2012, and Tom Crist, who hit the jackpot in May 2013.
Given that some of these individuals have made donations, many unsuspecting users who receive the fraudulent messages cannot dispute their legality.
If you think “no one falls victim to these scams”, then you are wrong. In January, reports said that a US woman fell victim to a lottery scam that used the name Tom Crist, who had donated 40 million dollars of his earnings to charitable causes.
