El Gordo sweepstake scam warning

FRAUDSTERS plan to swindle the unwary with an email informing recipients they have scooped a fortune in the ‘Loteria Nacional’.

Apparently sent from a plush Edinburgh address, it includes an attachment in Spanish to be filled in with a host of personal details and is signed by the president of the ‘UK National Lottery’, a Dra Susana Felix - and it asks the sheet be returned with the winner’s DNI.

Recipients are informed to act quickly, if the prize is not claimed by November 6, the prize - all £1,706,325.32 of it will be 'returned' to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Winners are also urged to keep the paperwork safe because it warns someone else could use the reference number and steal the prize.

And to begin the process of making a claim for the money, people are asked to contact an ‘agent’; a Dr Frank Marcus, a lawyer, giving his British mobile telephone number and an email address.

Apparently from the UK National Lottery - complete with Union Jack - it is subheaded the National Lottery Lotto and ‘lottery internacional’ - there’s a BP logo and a picture of some lucky previous ‘winner’ for good measure.

However, the correspondence from 24, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh - an expensive but empty office building - is littered with mistakes.

The pdf file of information is headed ‘El Gordo Spanish Sweepstake Lottery Companys’ and with 'great pleasure' tells the recipient of the secured award. It says it is informing the winner on October 11 for a draw actually completed the following day, October 12.

The currency is written in capitals ‘British Pound’ and when the amount is written out in full describes the last two figures, 32p, as 'thirty two cents of a pound'.

Anyone replying to the good lawyer will be asked for further information - such as a bank account - and the fraudsters will try and demand cash up front to ‘free’ the prize fund.