Advance Fee Scam – ‘Coca-Cola Anniversary Promo’

According to this email, which claims to be from Coca-Cola, you have won $1million in the ‘Coca-Cola Anniversary Promo’. The message claims that your email address was randomly selected as the winner by a ‘Coca-Cola powered email newsletter software operated by legally registered United States freelance tech experts’.

You are instructed to submit your name, age, and contact details by replying to the email.

But, alas, you are not an instant millionaire after all. The email is not from Coca Cola and you have not won any prize.

The message is a typical advance fee scam. If you reply with your details as requested, you will soon be asked to send various fees, ostensibly to cover costs such as insurance, taxation, banking, and legal costs.

The scammers will insist that the requested fees must be sent in advance and cannot be deducted from the prize itself. If you do send money, you will likely receive requests for even more imaginary fees. The fee requests may continue until your run out if money or realize that you are being scammed.

Of course, the scammers will pocket all the money you send and it is very unlikely that you will ever get any of it back.

Moreover, as the scam plays out, you may be asked to supply a large amount of your personal and financial information. This information may be then used to steal your identity.

Advance fee lottery scams like this are very common and continue to find new victims every day. To make their claims more legitimate, the criminals often use the names and logos of high profile companies such as Coca Cola, Google and Microsoft.

Be wary of any message that claims you have won a large sum of money via the random selection of your email address.