Lottery and sweepstakes scams: you can't win a contest you never entered

A call, letter, or Facebook message says you've won a lottery, a sweepstakes, or a mystery prize — often a name you half-recognize like Publishers Clearing House, Mega Millions, or a 'Facebook lottery.' There's just one catch: before the winnings can be released, you need to cover taxes, customs duties, insurance, or a processing fee. That catch is the entire scam. It's a textbook advance-fee fraud, and it drains hundreds of millions of dollars a year, with older adults hit hardest because the pitch is patient, friendly, and repeated.

The one rule that ends every version

How the con actually runs

1. The notification: a call, letter, email, or social media message announces a big win, often with official-looking seals and a 'claim agent' assigned to you.
2. The catch: to release the prize, you must first pay taxes, a processing fee, insurance, or a customs charge — usually by gift card, wire, or payment app.
3. The proof theater: sometimes a small 'partial prize' check arrives to build trust. It's a fake check that bounces later, after you've wired 'fees' against it.
4. The escalation: each fee is 'the last one.' New charges appear — a bank transfer fee, a legal fee, a bigger tax bill for a suddenly larger prize — until you stop paying.
5. The re-targeting: victims land on lists and get called again, sometimes by a fake 'recovery' service offering to retrieve the lost fees for a fee.

The tells, at a glance

What to do

• Never pay anything to collect a prize. Hang up or delete the message the moment a fee is mentioned.
• Don't confirm or 'verify' any personal or banking details to a prize caller — that data feeds identity theft and future scams.
• Never deposit and forward a 'partial prize' check; you're liable when it bounces.
• Warn older relatives specifically, and consider putting them on the Do Not Call registry and screening unknown numbers.
• Report attempts to reportfraud.ftc.gov and, for mailed versions, the US Postal Inspection Service (uspis.gov).

The bottom line

Every lottery and sweepstakes scam reduces to a single contradiction: you have to spend money to get money you supposedly already won. Real prizes never work that way. If a windfall arrives with a fee attached, a payment method that can't be reversed, and a request for secrecy, it isn't luck knocking — it's an advance-fee con, and the only winning move is to stop before the first dollar leaves.