International: Scam sites offer bogus Hong Kong lottery tips
Websites in mainland China and Taiwan are offering to sell "inside information" on winning Hong Kong lottery numbers -- then vanishing before authorities can catch those behind them.
The sites -- which require payments for the bogus tips -- turn up then disappear almost as soon as they're spotted, Hong Kong Jockey Club spokesman Wilson Cheng said Monday.
The club is a nonprofit charity that runs Hong Kong's lottery, horse races and football betting.
Hong Kong lottery officials claim there's no way anyone can have "inside" information on which winning numbers will be chosen in the random drawings.
Top prizes run into the hundreds of thousands of US dollars, and sometimes more.
The South China Morning Post newspaper reported Monday that one site, still up and running Sunday night, was offering memberships for between 4,800 yuan and 8,800 yuan (RM2,203 and RM4,039), and promising to provide members with winning numbers for the next draw.
The site was no longer available when The Associated Press tried to enter it on Monday.
"These fake websites have been surfacing for nearly a year," Cheng said. "We've had 50 or 60 such cases. They live for a very, very short time period ... so nobody can trace them."
Lottery officials file complaints with mainland and Taiwanese authorities whenever they learn of a new site, but Cheng does not believe there have been any arrests. He said the Jockey Club has also taken out newspaper ads to warn the public.