Give Me That Dough! ... D'OH!

You have to admit, criminals can indeed be creative--at least when inventing ways to relieve you of your money.

Here the age-old ploy of dangling free money in front of you is employed.  Unfortunately, this is not immediately suspect in the eyes of the average Lotto player.   No, it fits right in with the "give me something for nothing" American mindset.

Be warned, though, any time someone is giving you something for "free" or because you supposedly won it but don't remember playing the game in the first place, all four alarms should immediately start ringing in your head and probably is for those of us who have long since recognized TINSTAAFL.

Click onward to see the latest and, I must say, convincing fraud attempt from "PayPal".

PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY Congratulations! You have received this Notice because the records of PayPal, Inc. indicate you are a current or former PayPal account holder who has been deemed eligible to receive a payment from the class action settlement in accordance with PayPal Litigation, Case No. 02 1227 JF PVT, pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose. In your specific case you have been found to be eligible for a payment of $183.95 USD. Confirm Your Bank Account. The aforementioned settlement funds may be transferred directly to your bank account providing you have a linked card. The funds may not be credited directly to your PayPal account as this would render Paypal to be accumulating interest and thus profiting on litigation settlement funds which contravenes Federal law. Your bank account will be credited within 7 days upon submission of account details. To credit your bank account please click here. Don't forget to check your bank account for the PayPal deposits and get Verified! If you are seeking an alternate method of receiving your funds PayPal will be contacting those who do not submit their details by the 31th of March with instructions to receive a cheque in the mail. However this will incur a 7.5% processing fee deducted from the settlement amount and therefore PayPal only recommends this option to those users who do not currently have a bank account with linked Bank Card. Please Note that under United States federal law credit cards are not a legally approved method of settlement for Class Action suits and cannot be processed for transferal of funds in this case. This notice is a summary and does not describe all details of the settlement. For full details of the matters discussed in this notice, you may wish to review the Settlement Agreement dated January 14, 2005 and on file with the Court or visit https://www.paypal.com/settlement/. Complete copies of the Settlement Agreement and all other pleadings and papers filed in the lawsuit are also available for inspection and copying during regular business hours, at the Office of the Clerk of the Court, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, 280 South First Street, San Jose, California 95113. DATED: September 11, 2005 BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA. This PayPal notification was sent in accordance with your PayPal notification preferences. To modify your notification preferences, go here and log in to your account. PayPal will not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information to third parties. For more information about the security of your information, read our Privacy Policy at here. Copyright© 2005 PayPal, Inc. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. PayPal is located at 2211 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95131. Thank you for using PayPal! The PayPal Team Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page. To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML, update your preferences here. PayPal Email ID PP467897