Taiwan reports over 1,500 cases of fake winning invoice lottery emails

Taipei, July 5 (CNA) Authorities received more than 1,500 reports of fake winning invoice lottery emails in the latest two Uniform Invoice Lottery redemption periods, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said Sunday.

The CIB said in a press release that the number of people using digital carriers to store cloud-based receipts has grown in recent years and scammers have sought to exploit people's desire to win the lottery.

For winning invoices, the "Ministry of Finance Electronic Invoice Integration Service Platform" sends emails to verified addresses registered by users, notifying them of prize information and automatic remittance options.

The CIB said some criminals impersonate the Ministry of Finance (MOF) or major online retailers and randomly send winning notification emails to trick recipients into logging into a fake "electronic invoice service platform," where they are asked to bind credit card information to receive automatic prize deposits.

In central Taiwan, an information engineer received a fake winning notification email the day after the May invoice lottery numbers were released, the CIB said.

The email claimed he had won NT$1,000 and directed him to a fraudulent "Ministry of Finance uniform invoice platform" webpage where he was asked to enter his mobile number and credit card information, the bureau said.

The man later received a text message notifying him of an overseas transaction of US$1,750, but did not spot the scam and kept entering SMS one-time passwords (OTP) into the fake site, the CIB said.

During the process, the fake website repeatedly showed authentication errors, prompting the engineer to re-enter the same information and OTP codes 12 times. As a result, he was fraudulently charged a total of more than NT$780,000 (US$24,461) in overseas transactions, said the CIB.

The CIB said that during the March and May draw periods this year, more than 1,500 scam reports were filed, with total losses exceeding NT$60 million. Victims lost amounts ranging from a few thousand to several hundred thousand Taiwan dollars.

The most frequently impersonated entity is the "Ministry of Finance Electronic Invoice Integration Service Platform," accounting for about half of all cases, the bureau said.

Other bodies impersonated include well-known real-world retailers and e-commerce platforms, according to the bureau.

The CIB issued four key reminders. First, official emails from the platform only notify users of winnings and automatically credit prizes; any process requiring users to click into a webpage to claim prizes is a scam.

Second, emails and official websites from government agencies end in ".gov.tw" and will not use random or unrelated domains, the CIB said.

Third, legitimate invoice winnings are transferred to bank accounts and never require credit card details. Any request for a card number, expiration date, or the last three digits of the security code indicates fraud, the agency said.

Finally, OTP verification messages always specify transaction location, currency and amount, the bureau said.

People are advised to read SMS content carefully and never enter OTP codes into fake websites.