It has come to our attention that there have been phishing attempts by scammers impersonating us, the Asia Pacific Lottery Association Limited (“APLA”).
Phishing involves tricking victims into divulging their personal information and/or parting with their money.
Scammers have tried to do this by sending emails using our name or impersonating our officers, often claiming that you have won prizes from a lottery or event, and then requesting personal information and/or payments to receive the prizes.
Such emails are clearly scams, as APLA is not involved in the conduct of any such lotteries or events.
Further, APLA would never ask for your personal information or for payments to be made.
To avoid falling for phishing scams, we encourage you to adopt the following measures:
- Always ensure that any communications originate from an official source, especially if they are unsolicited. To verify that an email was sent from us, it is not enough that the name of the email sender is “APLA”. Check that the email was sent from an email address ending with “@apla.org.sg”, and be vigilant for any minor variations thereof which may be used. We will never use Gmail or other personal addresses to communicate with you.
- Look for highly suspicious indicators of scams. For emails and SMS, examples include spelling errors, poor grammar, use of foreign languages, use of threats, and calls for urgency.
- Avoid clicking or opening any suspicious links or attachments, if any. This is to prevent the installation of any malware on your device.
Please report to us any suspicious communications which you have received that are supposedly from APLA by emailing John Teo, APLA Executive Director at johnteo@apla.org.sg and Jo McLennan, APLA Assistant to the Chairman at enquiry@apla.org.sg.
You may also wish to report phishing incidents to your local law enforcement agencies.