You won a lottery you never entered
Lottery and sweepstakes scams inform victims they have won a prize they never entered to win, then request an upfront payment for supposed taxes, fees, or customs charges before any prize is released, a request no legitimate lottery organization makes.
What we know
Lottery and sweepstakes scams typically arrive by phone call, text message, email, or physical mail, informing the recipient that they have won a substantial cash prize, a car, or another valuable item, often from a lottery or sweepstakes the victim does not recall entering, or in some cases claiming to represent a well known real lottery organization such as a national or state lottery, or occasionally invoking a foreign lottery to add an air of exotic legitimacy.
The defining and consistent feature of this scam, regardless of the specific variation, is a request for the supposed winner to pay some form of upfront fee before the prize can be released, commonly framed as covering taxes, processing fees, customs duties for an international prize, or bank transfer charges. The Federal Trade Commission states plainly in its consumer guidance that legitimate lotteries and sweepstakes never require a winner to pay money upfront to receive a prize, and that any request to do so is a reliable sign of fraud, since actual taxes on lottery winnings in jurisdictions where they apply are typically withheld directly from the prize amount by the lottery organization or paid by the winner directly to a tax authority, not sent in advance to a third party claiming to administer the prize.
Scammers frequently target older adults with this scam, a pattern documented in FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center demographic breakdowns, and often build a sustained relationship with a victim over multiple calls, sometimes requesting repeated smaller payments framed as one additional fee after another, a manipulation aimed at maximizing total funds extracted before the victim recognizes the fraud or runs out of money to send.
Some variants specifically impersonate real, well known lottery organizations by phone or through fraudulent letters using official-looking logos and letterhead, and may reference real employees or spokespeople of a legitimate lottery to increase credibility, though the actual lottery organizations themselves have no involvement and are frequently victims of the impersonation as well, prompting several state lottery commissions in the United States to publish specific warnings on their official websites about scams falsely using their name.
Payment is typically requested via wire transfer, prepaid gift cards, or cryptocurrency, all methods that are difficult to trace and effectively impossible to reverse once sent, unlike a credit card charge which may sometimes be disputed through a chargeback process.
Consumer protection guidance from the FTC and AARP's Fraud Watch Network recommends treating any notification of winning a prize in a lottery or contest one does not recall entering with strong skepticism, never paying any fee to receive a prize regardless of how the request is framed, verifying independently through a lottery organization's official published contact information rather than any number or link provided by the person claiming the prize, and reporting suspected lottery scams to the FTC and, for cases involving mail fraud, to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Common claims
- I have to pay taxes upfront before receiving my lottery winningsFalse - legitimate prizes do not require advance tax payments
- If I won a foreign lottery, I owe customs feesFalse and also illegal - it is a crime for U.S. citizens to participate in foreign lotteries
- Paying a small processing fee is normal to claim a prizeFalse - no legitimate prize requires any upfront payment