Police warning on lottery scams

POLICE yesterday warned the public to ignore letters claiming they had won in foreign lotteries or that they had inherited large fortunes.

There has been a spate of reports of letters being sent to Cypriots claiming they had won the lotteries of other countries or that a relative had died and left them a huge fortune, police said in a written statement.

The authorities warned that all the details in the letters were false.

They usually asked the recipient of the letter for financial assistance to transfer the inheritance to Holland so that it could be shared out.

If the recipient is convinced and sends the money, the sender keeps it and breaks off all communication, police said.

Police have also warned against letters concerning winnings from lotteries in Spain and other countries.

In these cases, the sender asks for the recipient’s personal details and a bank account number, which would supposedly be used to deposit the winnings.

If the recipient responds, the sender asks for an amount of money to release the winnings.

That amount would certainly be lost, police said.

Such letters were also sent through email.

Police urged the public to be very careful and ignore such letters because they were a scam.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.