Football lottery scam targets UK punters
Fans of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United are being targeted in a new email scam that attempts to trick recipients into sending premium rate text-messages in the hope of winning non-existent Champions League final ticket prizes. The ruse promises entry in a draw for a chance of a seat at the Stadio Olimpico on 27 May but …
John,
These are revenue share short codes. All the Regulator has to do is 'follow the money' to discover who is behind this fraud.
Ofcom allocated the short code block 60000 - 60999 to Orange. The short code 60999 was given to txtNation.
http://www.txtnation.com/
txtNation uses it to run numerous campaigns on behalf of their clients.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22txtNation%2260999&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
Phonepayplus should ask them.
It appears from comments made on the internet referring to other problems that MX telecom is the company that 'owns' 60999.
Txtnation is just one of a number of resellers. These are revenue share short codes. MX telecom must know which reseller they are passing the revenue to for this premium rate 'service'. In turn that reseller must know which client is using which keyword/code in order to pass on the revenue.
Under the Phonepayplus code the revenue should be withheld (by the network/presumably MX telecom in this case) for 28 days before being passed on. This was introduced supposedly to stop this type of fraud. It obviously has not. The fact that this withheld revenue is used to pay any fines that Phonepayplus may decide to impose on the scammer possibly explains this.
Of course if this type of fraud was reported to the police nobody in the revenue chain (including Phonepayplus) would be allowed to touch any of that money.
got this at work last week and informed txtnation. No reply from their sales dept. seems they know all about this already and dont care. Phonepayplus might though when they get round to investigating it
"Most likely, cybercriminals collect a fee for each SMS, but they do not give any ticket to Sükrü Saracoglu Stadium or Stadio Olimpico in return."
Aw, c'mon. Nobody is going to fall for this. They're soccer fans, it's not like they are idiots or something.
I kind of admire these types of scammers, I mean if I was motivatied to enter a competition and didnt win (as usual) I wouldnt be looking for a scam. Now multiply that by hundreds of thousands and there you have it. Great!
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