Man travels 1700 km from Odisha to Delhi on foot to claim bogus lottery

New Delhi: This happens only in India, a man hailing from a village in eastern Odisha, traveled 1,700 km to BBC Delhi office to claim fake lottery.Ratan Kumar Malbisoi, 41, had received a message on his mobile phone two years ago that he had won the BBC's national lottery for 20 or 30 million rupees ($319,000-$478,000; £194,000-£292,000).Poor Ratan, could not understand the fake message and that he was being scammed. He gave his bank account details to the scammers. He then traveled to BBC office in Delhi himself to claim the lottery.Little did he know that he was being fooled.Ratan is unemployed and had borrowed money from his friends to live in the city.In the freezing cold, he wore just a shirt and trousers. He told, he got the message of lottery on April 2012.He then informed them about his name and address immediately.He got a call within no time. "The caller said he was the BBC's chancellor. He spoke really well. He promised me a large sum of money but said I would have to first send 12,000 rupees ($191; £117) so that he can transfer the money into an RBI account.""I told them I was a very poor man and that I didn't have any money to give them. He said then they couldn't pay me any money, but over a period of time, we kept negotiating and they finally asked me for 4,000 rupees," he says. He then told them to deduct 4000 rupees from the lottery amount as he could not afford it.But the scammers refused, so Malbisoi sent them a letter stating the family condition and all the details.He then asked them for the cheque and they told him that it has come to BBC office in Delhi.Malbisoi is convinced that the call came to him from Britain. On the face of it, it does look like a UK number but experts say it is very difficult to establish that it really is located there.The mobile number Malbisoi gave was answered by a man who spoke in an accent that sounded more like African than British. He introduced himself as Scott Smith, said he was based in the UK, but refused to tell his job title. Since, India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world, mobile fraud is also on the rise.Millions of messages are spam and sent from internet services which are fraudulent. A new term has been devised for this type of scam called Nigerian 419 scam This involves sending fake messages which would tell you that you have won a lottery.They would also ask your give your bank account details so that they can transfer your lottery money into your account.These fraudsters would then steal your money from the account, so beware and never rely on these messages.