How can I find an email pal from Hong Kong?

Does anyone know of a website that could verify whether HSBC Bank of Hong Kong is fraudulent or not?

• I've been entering in online lotteries for taking surveys these last few weeks. Recently, I received a cordially written email from "HSBC Bank of Hong Kong" asking for my account number and identification in order to receive my interest of $800,000 from the lotteries. I replied back asking if there were a number I could contact them at and they replied with several numbers and an address. The thing is that I cannot call it because it is a Hong Kong number. The rule of thumb over the internet is to never give your personal information out...especially when it comes to something like this. As I still remain very skeptical, it still couldn't hurt to find out a little about this. What is a good source for determining the legitimacy of something like this? Please help!!!

• Answer:

  100% scam. There is no lottery. Whether or not that bank exists doesn't matter, that email did not come from a real bank. There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money. The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be from HSBC Bank of Hong Kong and will demand you pay for made-up fees, in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram. Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever. Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram. You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information. Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash. As you know, whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.