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That "gimmick" is known as phishing. They are hoping you are dumb enough to fall for this. If you really inherited or won anything, you wouldn't have to send all of this information to anyone since they would have this information, if you entered a contest. If the case is that you inherited anything, you would be contacted in a more professional way than e-mail. This is just like the scam that goes around saying that your bank account information has been compromised and they ask for your routing number, account number, name, address and phone number, etc. First off, if that really was your bank- they'd have this information. Second, no respectable bank would even contact you if your account was compromised. A few years ago, a hacker bypassed the servers at my bank and downloaded thousands of debit card numbers. While trying to pay for items I had bought at a store using my debit card, it came up as inactive/invalid. The bank had deactivated all of the numbers compromised and waited for the customers to make the first move by contacting the bank and letting them know that their debit cards weren't working. Only then did the bank re-issue new cards without needing any information. A hint to determine whether or not such an e-mail is fake is to ask yourself some common sense questions: Did the e-mail contain proper grammar? Wouldn't a bank that know its OWN routing number? I personally believe that any one that falls for this should be punished just as much as the person trying to commit fraud, only their charge would be STUPIDITY.