El Mundo Sweepstake
Advance fee fraud
An email or letter arrives claiming you have won tens of thousands of dollars in a Spanish Lottery you have never heard of.
That’s right, the El Mundo Spanish Lottery Sweepstake notification is a carbon copy of the El Gordo advance fee fraud.
The El Gordo lottery is the official Spanish lottery but it is only open to Spanish residents. The people behind these scam letters and emails are not connected to the real El Gordo lottery.
In one version of this scam, the El Mundo Lottery Promotions/Prize Award Department claims your name was entered into the El Mundo Spanish Lottery Sweepstakes and you won €615,810 euros.
To collect your prize you must contact the claims agent from Santalucia Security Company, S.A.
It asks you to fill in a processing form and provide your name, address, date of birth, bank account details, next of kin and other personal information.
The letter states that Mapfre Marketing Company, which entered your name in the draw, will keep 10% of the winnings.
If you respond, you will be asked for various fees in order to release your alleged prize. Of course, you’ll never see one cent of your fake winnings.
Worse still, you have now provided your bank account details and other personal information to scammers who may use it to steal money from your bank account.
Similar scams are also operating under the names International Lottery de la Primitiva, Euro Million International Promotion Programme and Spanish Sweepstake lottery.
Scams of a similar type include:
For more scams of this type and others, visit the full list of scams by type page.
