‘UEFA EURO 2016 ONLINE E-Draw’ Advance Fee Scam
The original site is no longer online; links go to the Internet Archive copy.
The claim
Email purporting to be from European football governing body UEFA claims that you have won £760,000 in the UEFA Euro 2016 online e-draw.
UEFA EURO 2016 ONLINE E-DRAW
ONLINE NOTIFICATION DESKWe happily announce to you the draw (#1070) of the UEFA EURO 2016 ONLINE E-Draw, online
Sweepstakes International program. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 1395752415-
750 with Serial number 1395/16 drew the lucky numbers: 06 17 26 58 34 bonus number 89, which
subsequently happen to be among our lucky selected email address in the online draw in the 1st
category i.e. match 6. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £760,000.00 (Seven
hundred and sixty thousand great British Pounds) in cash credited to file ZXT/13957008932/16. All
participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through
computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, individuals, associations, and
corporate bodies that are listed online. This promotion takes place once in a year.For more details email our claim office for price claims along with your file number,
Full names:
Age:
Occupation:
Country:
City:
Phone number:
Mr. Gabriel Wayne
Email: uefa_claimsdept16@yahoo.fr
Website [removed]
Our agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as
you send the required details. For security reasons, you`re advised to keep your winning information
confidential till your claims is processed and your money remitted to you.
Congratulations from me and members of staff of UEFA EURO 2016 Draw.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Thomas H. Price
What the fact-checkers found
The email is not from UEFA and you have not won any money. The email is an advance fee scam designed to trick you into sending your money and personal information to cybercriminals.
According to this email, which claims to be from European football governing body UEFA, you have just won £760,000 in the UEFA Euro 2016 online e-draw. The supposed winning notification, which arrives as a PDF complete with UEFA themed graphics and ‘official sponsor’ logos, claims that your email address was randomly selected as a winning entry via a ‘computer draw system’.
To get hold of your unexpected windfall, you are instructed to send your details to the ‘claim officer’ Mr Gabriel Wayne via a Yahoo email address.
However, the email is not from UEFA and you have not won so much as a penny, let alone £760,000. There is no prize and the ‘online e-draw’ described in the message does not exist. The goal of the email is to trick you into sending money and personal information to online criminals.
If you fall for the ruse and contact the ‘claim officer’ as instructed, you will soon receive a follow-up message that demands that you send money to cover various expenses supposedly related to the processing of your prize. The scammers will claim that these expenses must be paid in advance and cannot be deducted from your prize money under any circumstances. They will warn that, if you do not send the money they demand, you will forfeit your claim to the supposed prize.
But, of course, all of the money you send will go straight in the pockets of the scammers and you will never get it back. Nor will you ever receive the promised prize, which never existed to begin with. After the scammers have extracted as much money from you as they can, they will simply disappear without trace.
Moreover, during the course of the scam, the criminals may have tricked you into supplying a large amount of your personal and financial information. They may later use this information to steal your identity.
Advance fee scams like this one are very common and take many forms. Scammers tried a very similar ruse back in 2012. Criminals have also sent fake lottery win notifications claiming to be from FIFA.
Be wary of any message that claims that you have won a large sum of money in a lottery or promotion that you have never even entered.
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