This morning I received an e-mail from someone advising me that I was a lucky winner in the Hope Foundation International. In fact I was SO lucky that I have won $2,500.000. If you receive such notifications in lotteries in which you know you never bought tickets be assured they are frauds. Do not respond to them. These people are looking to pick your pockets. I probably receive at least one of these notifications a week. Even worse are the so-called Nigerian scams. These are very active once again. I am seeing at least one a day and sometimes three or four. Mostly they hit several of my email addresses at the same time. In these schemes they send you an e-mail out of the blue telling you that they have a huge sum of money (anywhere from $12 million to $48 million - always millions but usually some odd number to make it look more believable) and they want to have you help them transfer it offering to split it with you to the tune of anywhere from 10% to 50%. The story is normally they have control over a big deposit left by some foreign national who has been killed, a government agent who skimmed it off and is now dead, their husband/cousin etc. died and they need help getting it out of the country, and in some they claim to be dying and want to leave their fortune to charity if you will help them. Do not respond to these. The first question you should be asking is how did they get YOUR name and e-mail address? The answer is they are sending this to thousands of people hoping a few are stupid enough to respond and a few of these will be gullible enough to get caught in their net of deceit. Unfortunately there are still a few whose greed gets the better of them and they will let themselves fall for this. The process eventually leads to where the person on the other end will ask for some earnest money or they will ask for your bank information so they can send you the first transfer. You will never see a dime after they get the earnest money or, in the second instance, they will make a transfer alright, but it will be OUT of your account. Be careful. No one REALLY wants to send you free money. The sad part of this is people are falling for this. It is estimated that billions have been scammed in this fashion. If no one ever responded these scam artists would have stopped this stuff 20 years ago. They live the old adage "There's a sucker born every minute" from the scammed banker David Hannum - not P. T. Barnum as most people think. Orin R. Wells Wells Family Research Association P. O. Box 5427 Kent, Washington 98064-5427 <OrinWells@wells.org> http://www.wells.org Subscribe to the "Wells-L" list on RootsWeb