We hereby urge you to claim the winning amount quickly as this is a monthly lottery. Failure to claim your win will result into the reversion of the fund to our following month.”

The curse of lottery fraud seems be getting far too common. The above example is just one received recently. Many victims are too embarrassed to admit being the subject of such scams but at least 70 000 victims are known. Unfortunately the perpetrators feed on the latent greed in everyone to persuade people to first release their personal details and, if they can pull you further in, encourage victims to part with money supposedly to cover postal costs or ‘administration fees.’ One gentleman was found to have handed over £10 000 and only alert bank staff and a police officer prevented an elderly couple from handing over their £20 000 savings to a fraudster.

Investigations in Canada by the British Office of Fair Trading revealed fifteen call centres carrying out lottery fraud and already over £1.6 million had been received from British victims. The development of modern technology and mass media has made such hoaxes easier and most come from other countries particularly, for some reason, Canada and Nigeria.

It is interesting that many hoaxes come from criminals for whom English is not their first language and this leads to basic grammatical errors in emails, letters and speech. These even show in the example at the head of this article. Should you see such mistakes, become very suspicious.

Other points to bear in mind:

1. There is no fee to pay in advance of receiving a lottery prize.
2. Lottery organizations never advise winners directly. To claim a prize in the UK lottery draw winners have to take their winning ticket to a retailer and thus start the claim procedure. If a winner is a member of a syndicate then the group’s administrator would advise them.
3. Holding a winning ticket is sufficient identification. No further identification is needed. Never give out personal details.
4. If you are in a lottery you will know about it already. You will have bought a ticket or joined a syndicate. There is no other way.
5. If there is a doubt you can get advice from the British National Lottery organization by accessing their website but do not use the details provided in any correspondence from the fraudster.

If you receive a lottery fraud email - delete it

There are some excellent resources online for advice on what to do if you receive something from one of these criminals and even to report them. One of the best websites belongs to the Metropolitan Police in London. The best action to take however is to take it no further: destroy the letter, delete the email or put down the telephone. Stop the scam in its tracks.

If you would like to know more about the lottery, play in it or even earn an income, please visit UK lottery draw.

Restoring such aircraft is obviously a very expensive undertaking so the Aviation Society was delighted to learn it had received a grant of £50 000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Heritage Lottery Fund was set up in 1994 to distribute British National Lottery money to cultural, history and conservation projects. It began life at the same time as the lottery and since its inception the Fund has granted over £4.4 billion to in excess of 33 900 deserving projects.

The one hundred kilometres of beautiful and ancient wooded river valley between Londonderry and the Sperrin Mountains is the Faughan Valley. A partnership consisting Derry City Council, The Woodland Trust and The Rural Area Partnership In Derry (RAPID) has been arranged in order to restore woodland habits and improve the interaction between the area and the local population. Proposed projects include rural crafts training, Heritage Weeks, woodland visits and walking festivals.

The Heritage Lottery Fund Helps Many Conservation Projects

To help the scheme, the Heritage Lottery Fund is looking to provide up to £1.2 million. Woodland Trust representative Brian Poots said, “We are absolutely delighted to receive the backing of the Heritage Lottery Fund. With our collective efforts, we can make a positive and lasting contribution to the beautiful Faughan Valley; it’s good news for the landscape, for wildlife and for people.”

The Heritage Lottery Fund certainly does use money from the British National Lottery for deserving causes so the news that its budget is to be increased is very good news. As the income to the UK lottery draw is growing, the Fund is to receive an extra £25 million per annum to bring its total to £205 million.

It is clear the UK lottery draw money distributed by the Heritage Lottery Fund has been used very wisely so the increased funding will mean more historical buildings, conservation projects, libraries and museums will benefit in the following years. With each weekly British National Lottery draw the whole nation wins.

If you would like to know more about the lottery and how to play, please visit UK lottery draw.

Players who participate in the British National Lottery must imagine winning the jackpot like Kevin but what are the chances of doing so?

The odds against winning the top prize works out at 1 in 13 983 816, about the same as becoming an astronaut! It is true that you are more likely to be struck by lightning (1 in 2.32 million). If you could buy £100 000 worth of tickets each time the prize money rolls over, mathematician Bill Hartson believes you would have a 1 in 14 chance of winning the jackpot.

Of course there are other prizes than the jackpot to be won. In each weeks draw it is said that around one million players win a prize of some amount. To take home the top prize you need to match six numbers between 1 and 49 but there are prizes available for five, four or just three numbers. The amounts available range between £100 000 and £10 and the odds of winning one of these drops to between in 2.3 million and 1 in 56.7. The chances of winning any money at all stand at 1 in 54.

Playing through a syndicate is probably the more efficient way to join the UK lottery draw. Any money won by a syndicate is distributed among its players, which of course increases the chances of any one player receiving a return. In any case syndicates tend to win one in four of the jackpots.

Search the Internet and you will find several ways to improve your chances in the British National Lottery but perhaps the most promising is the Elottery scheme. The programmes advantages are largely mathematical. For five pounds a week each player gets forty-four entries into both the Wednesday and the Saturday draws. Each syndicate comprises forty-nine members. The players each choose five numbers, which are entered into the lottery, the sixth number for each entry is taken from the forty-four remaining numbers and added to the five already selected. This simple model improves the chances of winning a prize by 702% to 1 in 13.

Of course the British National Lottery is still a lottery but there do seem to be ways to increase a players chances of winning money. Joining a syndicate certainly seems to do just that. There are indeed better ways to play the UK lottery draw.

Several thousand spectators are expected and no doubt many of them will dream of someday owning such a beautiful piece of engineering of their own. It is also fairly likely that they will want a lottery win to furnish the funds.  

But what do lottery winners really do with their money?

What Would Do If You Won The Lottery?

Anthony Castro recently won $250 000 on the Idaho state lottery. He had moved to Boise after living in New York where he had been shot in the head at the age of nineteen. After the September 11 attacks he moved and lived in a homeless shelter for a while. He found a job, got married, had children and them divorced. He noted, “After so much turmoil in my life, and loss of my mother a year ago, this is truly a blessing for me. My dreams, everybody’s dreams, are coming true.” His use of the jackpot is not surprising: he donated some of the money to his church, built a trust fund for his children and placed the rest in investments.

Recent record European lottery winners, Nigel Page and Justine Laycock had another use for their money. Immediately they bought a four million pound house in a rural location and gave their four-bedroom house to Denise Kelso, the cleaner who had looked after it for several years. They also gave her a new car. Denise also now looks after their new mansion too.

In Newport, Gwent, Jennifer Southall started slowly. The cinema supervisor won £8 million in the British National Lottery. She said, “When I went to have my ticket checked, Camelot gave me a bottle of champagne to help me celebrate, but I just went home and ordered a pizza. I still haven’t opened the champagne – I have never tasted real champagne in my life.” She did go shopping the next day and she and her mother spent £1500.

Ms Southall is determined to enjoy her win, however. She has already given up her job and is about to exchange her council owned house for a large house with a swimming pool, take driving lessons, buy a “pretty red car,” get a holiday home and go on exotic holidays (some with her family).

Following the experiences of earlier winners, most new UK lottery draw winners take the advice given and are fairly conservative with their money. Most do allow themselves an extravagance however. Playing the British National Lottery gives you the chance to dream. If you are at Wilton House on 14 August you might allow yourself to do just that. After all, dreams do come true.

Most players of the UK lottery draw must dream about how good their lives would be if they won the jackpot. But is it really such a life-improving event?

Mark Gardiner was a winner of the UK lottery draw jackpot in 1995. He received £11 million. After embracing the publicity offered to him he went on to spend much of his new fortune. As a result, he lost many of his friends and family and reflects, “The trouble isn’t the money: it’s what the money brings along with it. It enabled me to get rid of a box of problems but it just gets replaced by a posher box of even bigger problems.”

Such winners find the challenge is the sudden change from having little to being wealthy overnight. In the light of this, the organisers of the British National Lottery, Camelot, have devised a support system. Employees of the company, including Dot Renshaw, who advises new winners of their good fortune, encourages them to take a holiday and not to rush into any life-changing decisions. An advisory panel of bankers, lawyers and financial advisors is available to help the winners, as it is very difficult to deal with large sums of money without professional advice.

It is probably the publicity that is most destructive to winners of the UK lottery draw jackpot. Now, however, they have the option of anonymity and the Press Complaints Commission have introduced specific regulations to ensure those who have thus chosen are allowed to stay unidentified.

Camelot staff have also been trained to deal with begging letters for the winners. There are also winners’ events so those in the same situation can meet and discuss their challenges. New winners are also put in touch with previous winners as mentors. 

The research company, Ipsos Mori, have ongoing studies to examine the effects such large amounts of money have on people. Generally it seems the advice available to British National Lottery winners is being acted upon. One poll discovered that more than half of the winners (55%) were much happier after their win, although the winners’ own characters may influence this of course. Ninety five percent of married winners were still with the same partner and the same percentage reported they still had the same friends.

Another study examined the car choices of UK lottery draw winners. The brands concerned were quite surprising and showed some quite conservative choices. The top carmakers favoured were Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Mini and Vauxhall respectively.  Porsche only came at number eight.

The UK lottery draw first came into being in 1994 and has subsequently created 2300 millionaires. The winners now clearly get more support than previously which helps create a happier experience. Mark Gardiner is now happier with his life too. He is about to marry his first wife after falling in love with her all over again.

In preparing for the 2008 Beijing Games, the World Class Pathway scheme was set up. This provided £265 million from the British National Lottery for athletes like Rebecca and gave them access to world-class training, coaching and medical support. Ms Adlington believes this funding has been key to her success. Certainly, the athletes supported in this way came home from China with a haul of over 140 medals. Clearly all eyes are now on the 2012 London Olympics and the UK lottery draw is now financing a similar scheme.

The Olympic Lottery Distributor is a body set up by the UK Government to oversee the distribution of National Lottery funds. They are expected to have an overall budget of £1835 million and will use this money to support all aspects of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. 

Twenty-eight pence out of every pound spent by players of the UK lottery draw goes to worthy causes and five pence of that will be going into Olympic funds. 

In total, £2.2 billion of British National Lottery funds will eventually be diverted into creating the actual structures used to host the Games. This should not be seen as a short-term investment however. The Olympics will provide a legacy for the capital city and indeed the country as a whole. Not all the money will be absorbed and lost by the project; the government has announced its intention of selling land formerly used for the Games and returning the profits to the National Lottery for use in other good causes.

An example is the Olympic village. This is partly financed by the UK lottery draw and will house some 17000 athletes and officials while the Games are in progress and in excess of 6000 people during the Paralympics. Once the events are all over, however, the site will be used as part of the Stratford City regeneration scheme, providing around 4000 new office buildings, dwellings, leisure facilities and a new shopping mall.

There are also other projects related to the Olympics and funded by the British National Lottery. Unlimited is an example which will provide sports and art opportunities for disabled people and the lottery fund has produced £3 million to support this initiative as part of the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad.

Previous Olympics have shown how difficult financing the events can be so money raised from the UK lottery draw is a very useful asset. Rebecca Adlington certainly thinks so. During a recent interview she thanked all those players of the lottery for giving her the opportunity to represent her country so well.  

The popular image of the UK lottery draw is of winners celebrating and losers looking to the next week but there are far more winners every week than we realise. These are the charities and other good causes.

Built on the site of a previous church, St Davids cathedral in Pembrokeshire was first opened in 1181. Since that time, it has seen earthquake and vandalism by marauding soldiers and constantly suffers from the effects of weather. However, the church has found a new ally in the form of the National Lottery, which has given a grant to rebuild the south cloister and north porch.

A lottery-based television series, ITV’s The People’s Millions, has also been allocating money. One recipient was Rowan Gate Primary School in Northamptonshire which used it’s £50 000 grant to improve the school’s hydrotherapy pool and enable more access for the disabled.

An interesting series of initiatives based on the contribution made by servicemen in World War Two was financed by the UK lottery draw. One project was the Heroes Return scheme, which gave £17 million to allow veterans to revisit places where they had fought. This included 58 former members of the Royal Navy who travelled to Singapore and Penang.

A Second World War Grave

There were other aspects of the programme, however. Grants were given under the Home Front Recall scheme to projects that commemorated the people and events of the war. Similarly, the Their Past, Your Future initiative helped school children understand more about the Second World War and meet some of the veterans themselves.

The UK lottery draw was first launched in 1994. In the following 15 years, it has made a huge contribution to British society, raising £24 billion for good causes. £25 million a week is added to the capital and 28 pence from every entry to the draw goes in the lottery fund.

Twenty eight percent of the grants have been made to the county’s most deprived areas.

It is all too easy to see the lottery in terms of no more than the winning and losing of jackpots when in reality its effects are far more positive and long lasting.

The Grab-A-Grand draw is a popular feature

Now would hardly seem to be the best time to start a business and yet many people are doing just that. The unsettled economic situation does suit some enterprises.

One such business opportunity involves the lotteries. Strange as it may seem, there are those who consider the lotteries to be a reasonable investment of time and money. This is particularly true when you consider the large market involved: 70% of the UK population alone play the UK lottery draw every week.

A lottery is still a lottery, of course, and you are highly unlikely to win the jackpot. However, as a member of a syndicate you have a much better chance.

Okay, you are still unlikely to win the top jackpot but you have a lot bigger chance of winning one of the lesser prizes on a regular basis. I have even seen it said that the shaky state of the economy makes investing in lotteries as enticing as the stock market.

Potentially the most interesting lottery syndicates belong to the Elottery business, which was founded in 2002 by Len Fitzgerald and Tom Brodie. Now covering 127 countries, Elottery plays the UK lottery draw and the European lottery amongst others.

The Elottery syndicate business offers seven advantages:

1. It costs nothing to join.
2. You can build a group of players yourself and earn a commission every time they play the lotteries. As you imagine, this represents an ongoing residual income.
3. The scheme covers not only the European lottery and the UK lottery draw but the El Gordo draw and the Spanish Superdraw too.
4. The company gives full support to its members. This includes email marketing campaigns, customer support, promotional material, online marketing support, and the processing of payments. It is all handled on your behalf.
5. The system uses a mathematical model, which uses syndicates of 49 people and this increases the chances of scooping any prize in the lotteries by a wonderful 733% in the UK lottery draw and 3600% in the European lottery.
6. Training is freely available online and there is personal support available too. There are also regular online and offline conferences as well. There are those who are building successful Elottery businesses online and offline.
7. Once you are involved with Elottery, you become aware of other benefits too. Twice a week a ‘Grab-A-Grand’ draw for £1000 is held amongst members and the attractiveness is increased when you realise the person who invited the winner to join Elottery also gets £1000 in the draw. Certain activities within the business also earn ‘Golden Ticket’ points, which lead to regular draws for valuable prizes and then an annual draw to win a car. It seems likely that the prizes will increase both in number and value as the business increases.

Looking at these features, you can see why Elottery is fast establishing itself as a leading online method to enter the lottery market. Indeed, Elottery is worth considering whether you are simply considering playing the European lottery or the UK lottery draw or starting your own business.

Find out more about the Elottery syndicates and business at UK lottery draw.

Initially, the lottery was operated by the Loterias y Apuestas del Estado in Spain, the Francaise des Jeux in France and Camelot ran it in conjunction with the UK lottery draw in Britain.  Eight months later in October 2004 these three were joined by Portugal, Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria to make it a properly European lottery. 

Numbers are drawn in Paris every Friday night with tickets costing two pounds sterling or two euros. Portugal and Ireland also have a ‘plus’ option that costs three euros. In the UK, Camelot devised the Millionaire Raffle Game on 7 November 2009, which ensures an extra millionaire each week.

 The European lottery can be considered a success now with weekly sales of tickets approaching 100 million euros and the sales total since its start total many billions of euros.

 A great source of excitement is the fact that regularly the jackpot is not won and the total ‘rolls over’ to the next week, so increasing the jackpot available. The draw has a rule that the Euro millions total may not roll over more than eleven consecutive times which means the twelfth week must payout a jackpot. If no player has matched the five balls and two lucky stars needed to win, then the money can go to anyone holding five balls and one lucky star.  This can increase the pot of money available for a jackpot payout considerably of course. 

Jackpots paid tend to vary from country to country (depending on that country’s contribution) and, with the exception of Switzerland, are free from tax. 

With the effects of the roll over, a Belgian gentleman received 100 million euros in February 2007, which has so far been the second highest jackpot paid to one person. The highest prize received, according to the euro lottery results, followed a nine week roll over in July 2005 and paid 115 million euros to a lady in Ireland.

 In Britain, Les Scadding, together with his wife Samantha, were amongst the latest winners on Friday 6 November 2009 when they won one half of a £90 million jackpot, taking home £45 million from the European lottery (the other winner also lived in Britain).

 Despite its shaky start, Euro millions has now proved to be a European lottery success.

 If you want to find out more about the lotteries, why not visit UK lottery draw?

The traditional way to play of course is to purchase a ticket. These are available in one of the 27 500 authorized UK lottery draw distributor retail outlets. Instant win scratch cards are an alternative. Once you have chosen you numbers, a member of the shop staff enters the information in a lottery terminal, a ticket is then printed confirming the numbers chosen and the date purchased. Now a bar code and serial number are included.

Technology now allows the online playing of the British national lottery too. This time you select the numbers you want on the official website and pay the appropriate fee. The ticket is in the form of an email, which should be printed. There are also instant win opportunities with this method too. Entering the lottery in this way is quite reliable as long as the official website is used.

There is the ‘Lucky Dip’ option where the computer will determine your six numbers randomly, which is useful if you are not good at picking lottery numbers.

Once the national lottery numbers are drawn, they are widely advertised offline and online. The draw actually takes place on the BBC live in any case. Those holding the successful national lottery numbers write their name and address on the reverse of the ticket and present it to a British national lottery outlet.

Regularly, a ‘rollover’ situation occurs when nobody wins the jackpot and it is added to the next week’s prize money.

Most workplaces and clubs have British national lottery syndicates in place where a person controls the purchase of the tickets.  Syndicates now make up twenty five per cent of the jackpot winners and on 30 December last year £10 million was won by a syndicate from the north of England, each member taking home £1.7 million.

It is now possible to play the UK lottery draw by text and the chances to play lottery online have been made greater by the development of Elottery syndicates.

Clearly the UK lottery draw is building on its success and is moving forward.