SAME OLD SCOUSERS

Last updated : 23 November 2005 By Editor

Fraudsters are posing as representatives of a lottery sponsored by Liverpool Football Club in an attempt to defraud gulliable net users.

The spam messages claim that recipients are one of 40 lucky winners to have won £500,000 in a lottery supposedly run by Liverpool FC.

The emails say that LFC's financial success exceeded expectations (thanks to last season's Champions League win), making available a total of £20m as an "end of year promotion", and that the recipient has been randomly chosen by a computer as one of the winners.

Why the club hasn't earmarked this money towards securing a much-needed goal scorer when the mid-season transfer window opens in January isn't explained.

Some of these emails ask recipients to provide their personal details in order to claim the prize money. Whether marks will be eventually asked to hand over bank account information or simply tricked into stumping up fees to process the collection of non-existent winnings remains unclear.