have you been scammed??

Have you received any news that you've won???
a "guaranteed" £10,000 prize? Did your great fortune come with a mini-catalogue telling you to spend a minimum of £25 on miracle slimming cures, elixirs and vitamins, and then your prize will be sent to you?
If so, chuck it out now.
The "prize draws" break just about every advertising and marketing rule in the book. The Office of Fair Trading has taken legal action. The Advertising Standards Authority tells consumers the best place for them is the recycling bin. BBC's Watchdog has exposed one of the companies - Biotonic - and last week, Esther Rantzen's Old Dogs, New Tricks programme was on the trail of another operator.
Yet the draws continue to pour through our letterboxes, targeting elderly consumers and earning the operators millions of pounds every month. One Guardian Money reader told us how, on a recent visit to his elderly father's home in west London, he discovered his father had lost hundreds of pounds replying to the draws in the belief he had won. Unopened bottles of pills and elixirs lay around the house.
Joyce Head, of south Woodford, Essex, wrote to Guardian Money after receiving 40 "high-pressure selling" letters in the past six months, from Best Of, Star Shopping, Oliveal and Biotonic, telling her she'd won prizes worth between £5,500 and £11,500. "They all seem to be run by the same selling group. But there is no name, address, or phone number, just an envelope in which to put a cheque."
The envelopes give PO Box numbers in Belgium, Ireland and the Channel Islands. Guardian Money can reveal that Best Of and Oliveal can be traced back to Best Sales BV of the Netherlands, Biotonic is part of Groupe Duchesne in Nivelles, Belgium while another, much-criticised seller, Vitamail, is run from Carros in the south of France by Promondo.
The lure is simple. Personalised letters tell the recipient they have won a "guaranteed cheque". Unlike other prize draws, which suggest that you "may" be in line for the prize, these letters inform the recipient that they have, indeed, won the top prize.
All you have to do to claim, is buy an item from the accompanying, cheaply printed, brochure, usually for a minimum price of £20 or more. Typically, the products are cures and pills which make extraordinary restorative claims and whose true cost is likely to be a fraction of the price paid.
Biotonic began business from Lille in northern France, but provoked a storm of protest, led by the French equivalent of Which? (QueChoisir?). A court action in late 2003 banned it from operating in France, fined its founder, Claude Francois, ?30,000 (£20,300) and gave him a suspended prison sentence. But within months, the company had reversed into Groupe Duchesne across the border in Belgium, and turned its attention to Britain. Using the names "TV Direct Distribution" and "Just for You" it began sending 1m mailings a month to UK consumers, and picking up 4,000 orders a day.
Complaints started to come into The Office of Fair Trading, which, in 2004, obtained an injunction against Duchesne to stop it making "misleading prize notifications in connection with its home shopping catalogue business".
Duchesne's appeal to the Brussels Court of Appeal was thrown out in December 2005. The OFT called it a "landmark cross-border judgment" that would send a "clear message to companies sending similarly misleading mail shots".
Unfortunately, the mail shots continue to arrive. British consumers have this year been bombarded with prize draw mailings from Biotonic, Oliveal, Best Of and Star Shopping. So much for the "clear message".
The Advertising Standards Authority told Guardian Money that it has referred Biotonic, Oliveal and Best Of to the European Advertising Standards Alliance and Vitamail to the Swiss authorities. It added: "We unfortunately cannot source the country of origin for Star Shopping (a PO box doesn't always mean the operator is based in the same country). We can only advise, as we always do in these instances, to throw the mailings in the bin."
So why do they keep arriving in Britain, despite court action by the OFT and condemnation by the ASA? One clue came from Star Shopping, which gives an "undeliverable items" return address as 9 Trident Way, Southall, near Heathrow, London.
That's the home of SpringGlobalMail, a joint venture between the Dutch post office and Royal Mail, and the main carrier of bulk mail deliveries from Europe into the UK.
Guardian Money spoke to Richard Thomas at Spring's office in Amsterdam. He said Spring will only discontinue handling mail if it is ordered to by the OFT or other authorities. He added that Spring cannot be responsible for the contents of mailings. "We have proactively asked for guidance from the Office of Fair Trading but, to date, we have not received any. Is the problem going to go away if Spring stops sending the mail? No. There's a whole host of other providers it can go with."
But there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. Last week the OFT began legal proceedings against Best Of and Oliveal, in its first court action in the Netherlands. "This case demonstrates the OFTs determination to protect consumers from potentially unscrupulous businesses both in the UK and abroad," it proclaimed.
Beware ...
Company: Star Shopping
Prize: £10,000
Lure: "You have really won a cheque! And it is a very large sum, £10,000 ... I am taking advantage to remind you that this is not a farce or a joke in poor taste! It is an absolute certainty!
Cost: You have to spend at least £28.90 before claiming the "prize".
Mailing address: PO Box 586, St Peter Port, Guernsey
Actual address: Unknown. Trading standards in Guernsey say they have received complaints but are powerless to act. The PO box is simply a forwarding box. Star Shopping lists 9 Trident Way, Southall, as the address for "undeliverable items". This is the home of Spring Global Mail, a joint venture between the Royal Mail and the Dutch Post Office. Spring also distributes Best Of material. It is understood that Star Shopping is part of the same company, Groupe Duchesne in Belgium, which controls Best Of.
Company: Biotonic
Prize: £10,000
Lure: "You're a winner in our Official Delivery of £10,000 Draw ... A tidy sum of money which alone justifies all the precautions we're taking to deliver it!." The catalogue is full of promises to, for example, "put an end to nights disturbed by trips to the toilet," "help regain and maintain the most satisfying sexual activity" and "effectively erase your localised flab".
Cost: It seems you don't have to buy anything, but the bumf says that placing an order "is the quickest and surest way of instantly validating your Confirmed Winning Documentation ..."
Mailing address: Biotonic, BP 10250, 1070 Anderlecht - Mail, Belgium.
Actual address: Unknown - though almost certainly the Belgian town of Nivelles. The Office of Fair Trading says this is one of its most complained-about companies: "Every month we still get complaints about Biotonic."
Company: Vitamail
Prize £10,000
The lure: "The cheque for £10,000 has already been signed and is waiting to be sent to you." Personal notes from Vitamail's financial director/general manager Christopher Jones add to the sense of anticipation - everything suggests he's already written out a cheque with your name on it. And there's a "PS: I have just this minute learned your Certified Cheque is already ready!"
The cost: To get your prize you simply have to fill in a delivery authorisation which involves buying something from the catalogue. The company sells health products including garlic tablets, vitamins etc ...
Mailing address It operates out of a PO Box in Bedford.
Actual address Vitamail, which has also operated in Switzerland, is a trading name of a company called Promondo, based in Carros, south-east France.