Chinese residents in the crosshairs of a New Lottery Scam
Photo by: Leonard Low
A new lottery scam is calling up Chinese residents of Mainland BC and hooking them with the lure of entering a sweepstakes. The scam presents itself to residents as the Hong Kong Shi Hua Telecommunications and says it is conducting a marketing survey. Respondents are asked to answer a few questions as a part of the survey and then are offered the chance to participate in a sweepstakes contest.
A few days later, the scam calls up informing they have won the lottery. Anything between $10,000 to $100,000 was theirs for the picking. There would be some formalities, however, to be completed beforehand. For starters, they are asked to submit a sum of about $5,000 to the company. The sum was being taken as security deposit to insure their prize money, it is explained.
They are next asked to submit personal information like name, date-of-birth, SIN Card number, driving license details and bank account numbers.
After the lapse of a few days, they call up again. Winners are asked to deposit some more money. The scam explains this is membership fees which all winners are required to pay.
Those who smelt something fishy at this stage asked for their earlier deposit back. But they were told the money had been deposited with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority as an official procedure to prove they were not a money laundering firm.
Of course, this being a scam, victims are never going to receive the promised prize money. They also stand to lose all money they send across to the fraudsters.
According to complaints lodged with Mainland’s Chinese Community Policing Centre (CCPC), the scam was also approaching residents saying they were here to open a travel agency franchise.
Mainland BC’s Better Business Bureau warned against the scam thus:
Don’t participate in foreign lotteries. Consumers in Canada are not allowed to enter foreign lotteries, so do not provide any personal information if contacted by a person offering the chance to participate in a foreign lottery.
Source: Mainland BC BBB’s News Release
