United States Government issues warning on Green Card Lottery fraud

TIMES INT'L

By Matie Singh

On March 7, 2011, the US Department of Homeland Security (USDHS) sent out a press release asking people not to fall for the Green Card Lottery Fraud as the sender is “trying to steal your money.”

Fraudsters will frequently e-mail potential victims posing as State Department or other government officials with requests to wire or transfer money online as part of a “processing fee,” the press release continued, but that you should “never transfer money to anyone who e-mails you claiming that you have won the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery or been selected for a Green Card.”

According to the press release, these e-mails are designed to steal money from unsuspecting victims. The release warned that the senders often use phony e-mail addresses and logos designed to make them look more like official government correspondence. “One easy way to tell [that] they are a fraud is that the e-mail address does not end with a “.gov”.”

According to the Department of State website, entrants who has completed online DV 2011 entries between October 2, 2009 and November 30, 2009 and who were selected in the random drawing are notified by the Department of State’s Kentucky Consular Center by letter. Entrants can also check the status of their entries by returning to the DV website at http://www.dvlottery.state.gov from July 1, 2010 until June 30, 2011 using the information from their DV 2011 confirmation page they had saved at the time of their DV entry.

The press release continued to advise that entrants who completed online DV 2012 entries “will not receive notification letters from the Kentucky Consular Center.” Instead, they must check the status of their entries at the DV website: http://www.dvlottery.state.gov from May 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012.

The press release went on to state that the Kentucky Consular Center will not e-mail notifications to DV entrants informing them of their winning entry. “There is no other organization or private company that has been authorized by the Department of State to notify Diversity Visa lottery applicants of their winning entry, or the next steps in the process of applying for their visa.”

Related posts

Comments are closed.