Scam Visa Lottery Winners Get Free Airline Tickets to the US

Green card lottery spam email was seen once again running in the wild, but this time its content is so confusing that it's hard for the victim to understand if he is really going to America or somewhere in Asia.

GFI Labs informed us of this latest scheme which also offers free airline tickets to the lucky winners.

The message is really puzzling because its header contains information and a link to an outdated website called “The Official U.S Green Card Lottery Program”, which according to the same header is part of the United States Department of State, National Visa Center.

Upon a closer inspection of the website at hand, “usgreencardlottery.org”, I noticed that there wasn't any activity since 2009 and as GFI outlined, the site's disclaimer reads “USGreenCardLottery.org is a division of 'US IMMIGRATION CENTER', a private entity not affiliated with the U.S. Government. “

That is strange, as the header and the signature tell a different story. The letter is signed “Mrs Fatima Luwis, Secretary General US Consulate Ken Tucky, US DEPARTMENT OF STATE.”

Another odd thing is that the whole thing is handled by the Asia Pacific office. So how come the email comes from someone in “Ken Tucky”?

The only catch to this newly discovered fortune is that you have to pay $400 (€ 280), which is supposedly the application fee.

As always, these types of articles have the purpose of educating internauts so they'll be able to detect and avoid such schemes. Like in most cases, spammers make a lot of mistakes in their messages as they're written and conceived in a hurry, so it's not too difficult to conclude if it's a phony or not.

Because this is actually a social engineering scam, the email will probably not contain any malicious attachment but if it does, make sure you don't open it under any circumstances as it will most likely deploy some sort of malware.