Question from Reader:
I got a message stating that I’ve won a large prize in the Facebook Lottery and should contact the lottery agent to claim my prize. Is this real?
Answer
No. There is no such thing as a Facebook Lottery. Messages that claim that you have won a Facebook Lottery are advance fee scams designed to trick you into sending your money and personal information to Internet criminals.
The criminals may also refer to these bogus promotions as Facebook Sweepstakes, Facebook Grants and other similar names.
In some cases, the criminals may send out the ‘winning notification’ messages from cloned or hijacked Facebook accounts so that the messages seem to come from people you know.
If you receive one of these fake Facebook prize messages, do not reply and do not click any links that it contains.
Further Reading
- Facebook Lottery Scams Still Claiming Victims
- Advance Fee Lottery Scams – International Lottery Scam Information
- Advance Fee Scammers Using Cloned FB Accounts To Gain Victims
- ‘Facebook Online International Lottery’ Advance Fee Scam
- Facebook Sweepstakes Advance Fee Scam
- Facebook Grant Award Advance Fee Scam
- ‘Freedom Award Lottery Promotion Agency’ Facebook Page Scam
4 comments
My name is Tony C. and this is April 2, 2018. They tried to run the Facebook Lottery scam on me today for winnings of $600,000. They wanted me to send $450. in advance. And I was almost foolish enough to send the money. But just to good to be true.
Hi I am bharat Singh from India Iit’s reyali I won $2000000 usd some body will asking me 41950 Indian rupees and my ticket no is 7526541099222 please contact me on this no +918310119501
I was just contacted by one of these scams she said she was working for Facebook and she lived in California and I just won 500,000 dollars I told her this better not be a joke she applied it wasn’t I did give her a mailing address and she never asked for any money I started to believe her .But then here it came in order to receive my winnings I needed to pay a shipping fee just lucky I am a rrar broke person and had no money or I would of fell for this scam I can’t believe people really do this to people they should be put on the streets and try to survive without anything and see what real life is about but I not worried karma is a Bitch it will come back around
They tried to get me with this scam but I was skeptical right from the start and didn’t fall for it. For one thing, you can’t win a lottery you didn’t enter. The FBI confirms there is no Facebook lottery. These criminals are using fake names to make you believe who they say they are, of which they are not. They wanted me to buy a steam wallet gift card by Amazon for $150.00, take a picture of the back of it and email that to them with receipt. Of course I did not do it. They would have made purchases with that at my expense, I would not have received any money, and would have been one more scam victim.