14 DAY TRIAL // Scammers are leveraging the name and reputation of world renowned tire manufacturer Michelin in an effort to trick unsuspecting individuals into handing over some money.
Hoax Slayer has come across a scam email that purports to come from the Michelin Global Grants Office in Liverpool, UK.
The fake notifications read the following:
“Dear Sir/Madam,
MICHELIN GLOBAL GRANT PROGRAM Michelin is pleased to inform you that you have been awarded a grant of £1,500,000.00(One Million Five Hundred Thousand Pounds Sterling) in our global economic empowerment program which was conducted on the 25th of August 2013. Congratulations!
Please note that as an email program, participants were selected from a database of one billion email subscribers obtained by our IT department which was responsible for conducting the draw. This is not a lottery program and no tickets were sold because the whole process was carried out online.”
While the crooks clearly state that this is not a lottery, the scam is not different from a classic lottery scheme.
Potential victims are instructed to send their personal details to a certain email address.
Once this step is completed, victims are asked to pay upfront fees allegedly needed to cover various expenses.
Usually, the scammers initially ask for a small amount of money. If the victim complies, they keep asking for more.
In many cases, the duped individuals keep paying the money even after they realize that it might be a scam. Many of them still hope that they’ll get the big prize and recover the money they’ve sent.
Of course, no one ever wins anything, except for the crooks. In some cases, they’ve defrauded people of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Never respond to such emails, no matter how legitimate they look. Remember! If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.