Scammers Exploit The Names of Lottery Winners Brett McCoy and Robin Walker

According to this email, “Brett and Robin McCoy” are giving away one million dollars to five randomly chosen individuals as part of a charity project.

The message urges you to send an email to claim your funds and get further information.

However, the email is an advance fee scam.

If recipients do a web search for “Brett and Robin McCoy”, they will find a number of news reports about Canadian couple Brett McCoy and Robin Walker who won a $60 million lottery prize in 2017.

So, some recipients may erroneously conclude that the email is a genuine message from the couple and they really have been chosen to receive one million dollars.

However, the email is not from Brett McCoy and Robin Walker as claimed.

Those who reply as requested will soon be asked to send money, ostensibly to cover various fees and processing expenses related to the transfer of the funds. Scammers, still posing as Brett and Robin, will explain that the fees must be paid in advance and can not be deducted from the million dollar donation.

And, as the scam unfolds, victims may be tricked into supplying a large amount of their personal and financial information to the criminals.

At the end of the scam, the criminals will disappear with all the money their victims have sent. And, of course, victims will never receive the promised million dollars, which the scammers never had in the first place.

Moreover, the scammers may have managed to collect enough of their personal information to steal the identities of their victims as well.

Online criminals regularly use the names of lottery winners in very similar scam campaigns.

Be very wary of any message that claims that a lottery winner has decided to give away millions of dollars to random strangers selected via the Internet. This is a very unlikely scenario.