Lottery and Prize Scam Patterns to Recognise
Launch library · evergreen read
A message arrives announcing an unexpected win: a lottery you never actually entered, a prize draw somehow tied to your phone number, or a mystery shopper reward that seems to have found you out of nowhere. The sudden excitement is entirely the point, carefully designed to override the far more obvious question of exactly how you came to be entered in the first place.
The pattern that follows is consistent almost every single time. To release the promised prize, you are asked to first pay a small administration fee, cover unexpected "customs" or "processing" charges, or hand over your bank details so the transfer can supposedly proceed. Genuine prizes are never released only after the winner has already paid something themselves upfront to claim them.
Scammers also lean heavily on secrecy, asking winners not to tell friends or family until the funds have safely arrived, which conveniently removes the one calm, outside voice most likely to raise a sensible doubt at exactly the right moment in the process, well before any money has actually changed hands.
If you genuinely cannot recall entering a particular competition, you almost certainly did not win it, regardless of how official or exciting the message sounds. Simply deleting the message, or reporting it where your email or phone provider allows this, is a far safer response than replying to ask any further questions at all.