Qld residents lose $100000s to online lottery scam

Queensland Police say over 30 people in the state have lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to a fake lottery scam distributed via Facebook.

In the latest incident, a person from Mackay “lost over $100,000”.

Police said they are “very concerned there could be more victims.”

The scam is reminiscent of similar spam email campaigns where a message is sent advising a user they had won a $7.5 million prize in a “Facebook Lottery”.

“Victims are requested to pay legal, late or administrative fees to ‘unlock’ or release the money,” Queensland Police said.

“This could be hundreds or thousands of dollars and could be asked for in instalments.

“The latest version of the scam involves the victim being sent a very realistic looking Facebook branded credit card.

“Victims are told the card will be made active once the victim pays a further $7500 (previous fees have already been paid). Once this is done, they will apparently be sent their winnings.”

Detective Acting Superintendent Melissa Anderson of the financial and cyber crime group said in a statement that the scam is “just a rehash of a number of long running phishing based lottery scams, just reinvented with a social media angle.”

She implored people that received messages to ignore them.

“You can’t win lotteries unless you buy a ticket,” she said.

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