Beware! US Visa Lottery scam

Bridgetown, Barbados – The Embassy of the United States of America to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean has learned of an email fraud purporting to offer “lottery winners” green cards upon payment of certain fees.

The scheme mimics the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV), or visa lottery, conducted annually between October and December by the United States Department of State. {{more}}Under this program the U.S makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States through a computer-generated random selection process.

The email scam asks presumed “winners” to forward fees by Western Union to the name of a private individual in the United States. Please DO NOT respond to any offer of this type. This IS NOT legitimate correspondence regarding the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery.

Legitimate Diversity Visa Lottery selectees will receive appointment letters from the Kentucky Consular Center for interviews at the Consular Section of the appropriate U.S. Embassy. The letters WILL NOT ask selectees to send any funds prior to that appointment. Further reliable information on the DV-Lottery programme is available at www.travelusa.state.gov under “2007 DV Lottery Instructions.”

Once again, please DO NOT respond to this email fraud and do not send money to ANY unsolicited request without verifying its legitimacy. If you received this email solicitation, please report it to the Security Office at the United States Embassy, Bridgetown Barbados, tel. 246 436 4950, fax 245 430 3747.