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$25M lottery scam aimed at elderly bustedNews Story
The feds on Tuesday dismantled an Israeli boiler-room operation that conned elderly U.S. victims out of $25 million by telling them they'd won a sweepstakes lottery. A dozen members of the international telemarketing ring were named in a three-count fraud indictment handed up yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court. Prosecutors say ring members bought more than 185,000 names from U.S.-based brokers to find victims to dupe into turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to claim the
Jul 22, 2009, 6:51 pm - Lottery News

Internet gambling bill awaits house voteNews Story
Legislation seeks to enable some forms of online gambling such as Internet poker and wagering on horse racing Congress is moving closer to passing legislation that will relieve U.S. financial services companies from implementing bans on Internet gambling as the Payments System Protection Act (H.R. 6870) was approved by the House Committee on Financial Services and appears headed for a possible vote by the full House next week. Pushed by the committee's chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.,
Jun 10, 2009, 7:51 pm - Lottery News

Online poker group says gov't seized $30M in player payoutsNews Story
In the latest skirmish in the battle over Internet gambling, online poker advocates say the government has frozen more than $30 million in payouts affecting thousands of players. The Poker Players Alliance released a statement Tuesday claiming that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York instructed four banks to freeze accounts belonging to online payment processors. John Pappas, the group's executive director, claims the frozen accounts contain funds owed to 27,000 players wh
Jun 10, 2009, 7:45 pm - Lottery News

Virginia high court rules that lottery must be accessibleNews Story
Federal and state laws require the Virginia Lottery to ensure that its games are accessible to people with disabilities, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. But nothing in those laws specifies how accessibility must be achieved, the court said in a unanimous decision reviving a lawsuit filed by four disabled Virginians who identified 16 lottery retailers unable to accommodate their wheelchairs. The court returned the case to Richmond Circuit Judge Margaret P. Spencer to determine what
Jun 5, 2009, 9:30 am - Lottery News

Joint task force created to stop Jamaica lottery scamsNews Story
The feds are cracking down on Jamaican lottery scams, which bilked Americans out of more than $30 million last year, authorities said Tuesday. The brazen con artists are transforming the tropical getaway into a fraudsters paradise pulling in untraceable cash to finance the drug and gun trades with impunity, officials said. It's just an incredible amount of money that's coming down here, said Vance Callender, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement attache at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.
May 27, 2009, 3:25 pm - Lottery News

Arkansas lottery retailers to be policed for fraud, officials sayNews Story
The legislation laying the groundwork for Arkansas' lottery does not require it, but officials say they expect the lottery system to include a security division that will be on the lookout for fraud by retailers. The problem of fraud by lottery retailers gained new attention in the U.S. in the wake of a 2007 scandal in Canada, where investigators found that retailers and their employees were winning a disproportionately large number of prizes. Between 1999 and 2006, at least 78 retail owne
May 19, 2009, 8:32 am - Lottery News

N.C. Supreme Court keeps lottery law in placeNews Story
Lottery barely avoids being deemed illegal The North Carolina Education Lottery can still operate after the state Supreme Court deadlocked Friday over whether the votes creating the games were lawful. Three of the seven justices agreed Friday the lottery law was unconstitutional and three others upheld the law. A seventh justice, Mark Martin, had recused himself from oral arguments in the case in September and did not vote. The 3-3 decision means a March 2008 state Court of Appeals ruli
Mar 23, 2009, 2:21 pm - Lottery News

Woman scammed out of $400,000 pursuing lottery-sized fortuneNews Story
This may well be the mother of all Internet scam cases. Janella Spears, a reverend and a registered nurse from Sweet Home, Oregon, ended up sending Nigerian fraudsters more than $400,000 when she was promised a multi-million dollar pay out from a lost relative. When she began to doubt she was sent letters from the FBI Director, the US President and the President of Nigeria. She still thought it was genuine and ignored the pleas of her family and law enforcement officials in the US. She
Dec 9, 2008, 1:23 am - Lottery News

Florida woman loses $40,000 in lottery ticket scamNews Story
A South Florida elderly woman was scammed out of thousands of dollars in an alleged lottery ticket scam, police said. Pembroke Pines police said that on Oct. 24 Aydee Suarez-Ospina, 72, was approached by the a Hispanic man and woman at the Bravo Supermarket at 12141 Pembroke Road. Police said the man told Suarez-Ospina that he was in possession of a winning lottery ticket and needed assistance in claiming the prize because he was not a U.S. citizen. The female suspect, pretending to overhe
Dec 5, 2008, 4:42 pm - Lottery News

Nine Israelis arrested for US lottery scamNews Story
US federal agents and Israeli police arrested nine Israelis in Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan on Friday on charges that they bilked New Yorkers out of more than $2 million through a lottery telemarketing scam. They are accused of cold-calling people in New York from a boiler-room operation in Ramat Gan and asking them to wire as much as $40,000 to Israel to claim nonexistent international sweepstakes prizes. The ring targeted senior citizens, who were told that the calls were coming from a New Yor
Sep 28, 2008, 6:41 pm - Lottery News