The dream of winning the UK National Lottery or the EuroMillions draw is strong for most players, but some may be more susceptible to believing in scams that are simply too good to be true. The most recent victim in a EuroMillions lottery scam making its way across the UK and the continent was an elderly woman hailing from Aberdeen, who has duped out of £24,000 as she followed the instructions of a man pretending to be acting in an official lottery operator capacity.

The woman received a falsified notice that she had won a substantial monetary prize through the draw, and was persuaded to make two distinct payments into separate UK business accounts in order to be able to claim her prize. Authorities investigating the scam have noted that the sophisticated use of seemingly legitimate bank accounts and names may have played a significant role in convincing the woman that she had really won.

Lottery officials have reminded their players that contacting the operator of the draw directly to verify a win before taking any action is of the utmost importance, and further caution that contact from those alleging to be authorities should be taken with several grains of salt. Recent EuroMillions and other lottery scams have been circulating via email, phone, and post, and are often marked by realistic logos, stationary, and other paraphernalia, making the need to double-check correspondence and notifications especially pronounced.

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Playing the lottery, whether it’s the UK National Lottery or any other game, can be a great source of pleasure and fun for players, but enjoyment and decline steeply when lottery scams become involved. Though lottery scams may seem obscure or distant, happening only in isolated spots or targeting only certain types of people, their reach can be quite wide, and efforts to quell the damage dealt by lottery scams are ongoing. One such effort is being launched by the UK Office of Fair Trading, which recently announced an eye-opening statistic: according to their data, the Office reports that £260 million is lost annually by those who fall victim to lottery scams.

The Office notes that a significant number of scams are conducted by informing people that they’ve “won” via telephone, email, and post, hooking them into handing over valuable personal information or money. Camelot, the operator of the UK National Lottery, has released a reminder to lottery players that the agency never contacts winners via these methods, and that the single best way to find out whether a given ticket has won is to check the numbers manually.

Though it may be tempting to believe all claims to instant riches, exercising a bit of caution can ensure that the disappointment of a lottery win lie isn’t compounded by the loss of lots of money. After all, the lottery should be about the chance to fatten –not to starve– one’s wallet.

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With all of the money being doled out to excited winners, there’s often plenty of happy news to relate about lottery events worldwide. But sometimes, scams and scandals break loose, and keeping an eye out for the methods used can help lottery players –and the general public– avoid falling prey to such schemes.

In one of the most recent examples of lottery scams, a group of four people were arrested in the American city of Chicago for bilking a set of victims out of over $100,000. The group approached elderly Hispanic citizens on the streets, with a given member relating that they had a winning lottery ticket, but couldn’t cash it because they were an illegal immigrant. The scammers would then offer to split the $1 million prize if the person would be so kind as to cash the ticket for them. Of course, they wanted a good faith deposit of some kind first, such as money or jewellery. After securing this prize, the scammers simply disappeared, leaving their victims short of plenty of funds –and probably feeling a bit foolish.

While such scams haven’t been spotted too recently among players of the UK National Lottery, the cash won by the team may serve as an inspiration to others to try their hands at enticing UK residents to easy winning ticket access. Keep your wits about you and play your own tickets –you won’t have to put up anything in good faith when you do.

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