Madam,

With your assistance, may I bring to the attention of your readers details of a letter I have recently received which is yet another attempt by persons unknown to obtain monies by fraudulent means - ie a scam.

The letter is headed ‘People’s Postcode Lottery’ showing an address in Oxford Street, London with ID, Audit Control, IOS numbers etc and is of better quality than many of this type. But, whilst the words have been spell-checked, the grammatical layout and quality of type should start ringing alarm bells.

In brief it claims that all unclaimed prize monies from European postcode lotteries are put yearly into a pot and a computer randomly selects winners from a database of residents on the UK Electoral Roll and hey, presto you, are one of the lucky winners and in my case to the tune of £385,000.

To obtain payment you must telephone a person with a very British-sounding name on a 0203 number which is not an area code but very well known as a code that scammers can and do utilise, and you will be informed that you will have to use the services of a claims agent to obtain your remittance. This is the scam. Without doubt you will be asked to pay a handling fee and, whilst this might or might not be a large amount, in the course of payment they will obtain your credit/debit card details and we all know how that will end.

Whilst Christmas is a time for giving, receiving and goodwill to all men, the gangs operating these frauds do not dress in red and ride sleighs.

Yours etc

Alan Hansell, Trefenter.

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