The primary way to defeat the Coronavirus pandemic is through enough people becoming vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.  Health officials have indicated that 70% of the population would be required to be vaccinated to reach this important goal.  Unfortunately, although the vaccines have proven to be both safe and effective, there are a number of people who, for a variety of reasons, have chosen not to be vaccinated.  As an incentive to increasing the number of people vaccinated, a number of states including  California, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia have set up legitimate lotteries for vaccinated people who sign up for the lottery for free.  As I told you in May, Ohio was the first state to set up such a lottery.

Taking advantage of public awareness of such lotteries, scammers claiming to be Capital Finance, Inc., a phony financial  management firm claiming to be from London are contacting people through emails in which they tell their targeted victims that they have won a million dollar lottery prize set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) in association with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pay people for losses suffered as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The scammers ask for extensive personal information from the “winners” of the lottery they did not enter which information is then used to commit identity theft.  In other instances, like in more conventional lottery scams, the scammers also ask for payments for taxes or costs related to the lottery prize.  Of course, there is no prize and any money paid to the scammers is lost forever.

TIPS

First and foremost, there is no Covid19 Lottery Compensation Prize and neither the WHO, nor the IMF nor the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are involved in any such lottery.

As with any lottery, it is hard enough to win a legitimate lottery that you have entered.  It is impossible to win one that you have not entered.  The state vaccination lotteries all require you to enter the lottery.  Also. it is important to remember that no legitimate lottery charges anything to collect your prize and legitimate lotteries do not collect income taxes.  They either deduct income taxes from your winnings or they pay you the entire amount of your prize and you are responsible for paying your own income taxes.

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide has been cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/