In Indonesia, lottery clubs have become a culture, usually among family members, office peers, close friends or old school friends in WA chat groups. Not only financially beneficial, lottery clubs also serve to tighten relationships.
Today, lottery clubs can also be done online for a wider reach. With only social media accounts on smartphones, it is easy for someone to start a lottery club or online investments by offering it to other netizens with the promises of incredible and instant benefits.
For fraudsters, lottery clubs also work as a platform to gain personal interests. Generally, lottery clubs/online investments only offer cash money or gold instead of products. This makes it easier for fraudsters to run away with money/gold from unfortunate members.
The usual media used for such crimes is Facebook or other trending online apps. Fraudsters also may set up online ads on FB/IG to lure members.
Characteristics of Lottery Club/Online Investment Frauds
- Fraudsters would offer their services with promises of great and instant profit or gold.
- Fraudsters would give prospective members easy ways to join the lottery clubs, such as only by giving your name and phone number to the admin.
- Fraudsters would ask prospective victims to transfer a specific amount of money to the fraudster’s account.
- The offers would, especially, make women or mothers likely to be tempted
When fraudsters have enough money gained from the victims, they would be gone with the wind.
How to Avoid Lottery Club/Online Investment Frauds
- Know the owner’s business identity. Legal businesses will be transparent about their information, from owner names, addresses, phone numbers, to legal papers to do their business. Conversely, fraudsters would tend to hide many things about their business details or even use fake identities.
- Know the lottery club’s system. Do not rush joining a lottery club. Find out first about the system. You have the right to ask about the details from how they get members, the deposit, the raffle, ways to obtain benefits, to what are the penalties for uncooperative members. These rules should exist to ensure all members obtain their benefits.
- Do not believe instant benefits. Who doesn’t want to get great benefits? The recent online lottery club frauds often offer incredible benefits for money that are deposited for a certain period of time. If you think it is too good to be true, that because it probably is and you would be better to reject it. Online investments/lottery clubs feature a pyramid-shaped system where you would get early quasi-benefits, and lose your money for good in the end.
- Report to the authorities or Halo BCA. If you were a victim of an online investment/lottery club, do not hesitate to call authorities or report to the Financial Services Authority (OJK) or Halo BCA at 1500888, so that fraudsters will get the punishment they deserve and cannot trick more victims
Only make investment in trusted institutions. Look for legal institutions that give you a sense of security, trusted, and profitable such as investing via Welma app from BCA.
Avoid any kind of lottery clubs or online investments! Be alert as always and be a smarter generation to avoid any fraud by reading more at www.bca.co.id/awasmodus