By April Drew

IRISH people taking part in the diversity visa lottery should be aware that there are bogus emails being sent out purportedly offering “lottery winners” green cards for a specified fee.

The scam starts with, “It is my pleasure to congratulate you on your success in the American DV 2007 lottery program,” and continues with, “You can scan them (photos) and send via email for faster processing. Clearance/acceptance fee is $989.67.”

Orla Kelleher, executive director of the Aisling Irish Center in Yonkers, said to be very cautious. “This is a definite scam. One must be very dubious of information they receive via email,” Kelleher told the Irish Voice.

Applicants chosen in the diversity visa random drawing are notified by the Department of State at the Kentucky Consular Center by letter, not by email. No other organizations or company are approved by the State Department to notify lottery candidates of their winning application.

A Woodlawn resident, John O’Leary received the bogus email.

“I knew it was too good to be true. When I saw the subject line telling me I was a winner, my heart skipped a beat,” he said.

O’Leary claims he has received numerous email over the past years from the diversity lottery department and this one was similar. “I applied for my green card last year so I thought maybe my name was drawn. It was only when I saw that they were looking for money that it confirmed for me that it was a scam,” says O’Leary.

Although the email did not request credit card information like previous email frauds, it did ask “winners” to forward fees to the name of a private individual, Greg Freeman, via a Western Union transfer.

“We accept Western Union money transfer as the ONLY payment method due to some reasons from our past experiences,” it says.

The U.S. Embassy in Dublin has warned people to “not respond to this email fraud and do not send money to any unsolicited request without verifying its legitimacy.”

The annual diversity visa lottery makes available 50,000 green cards on an annual basis to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. through a computer-generated random selection process.

By now all diversity winners have been notified for the 2007 period, and they are currently waiting or have been called for their interviews.

The Diversity Visa Lottery 2008 has commenced and applications can be processed electronically between now and December 3.