10 Hidden Lottery Scams You Shouldn’t Fall for

When you play India lottery, you should know the difference between a lottery scam and a real online lottery. Scammers have several tricks up their sleeves to scam you. This is the reason you have to be vigilant if you want to protect your hard-earned money.

In this article, you can learn about the hidden lottery scams and everything you need to know about them. So, let’s proceed.

What is an Online Lottery Scam?

An online lottery scam is one where any scrupulous person abuses the lottery system to extort sensitive data or money from the players. Sensitivity might include financial or personal information for accessing bank accounts. At times, these scammers also make you send the money to them.

Scammers send out messages and emails to several customers and they can make a huge profit even if they are able to scam a few. When you buy lottery ticket online from these scammers, they present the idea that you have won a massive jackpot and to claim it, you will only have to pay a small amount. Unfortunately, there is no jackpot and the money you pay can hardly be recovered.

This is the reason you should look out for potential lottery scams.

Top Lottery Scams You Should Know About

Here is a list of the top 10 scams related to lottery ticket online and offline.

1. Strike of Justice

This is a scam that took place in Canada. An elderly man bought tickets for several draws of Lotto 6/49 and visited a gas station to check if he has won anything. The lottery had no winnings but the station’s worker noticed that the ticket had been for multiple draws. Thus, he just kept the ticket without telling its owner.

Then the elderly man noticed that he didn’t have a ticket. So, he bought a new one having the same numbers. He played the same numbers every week and it wasn’t difficult to remember. During the draw, it was the winning combination.

Now, both the elderly man and the man at the gas station appeared to claim the prize. A lottery ticket company established who is the real money and both prizes were awarded to the elderly man. And, the guy from the gas station took home nothing.

2. Chinese Lottery Fraud

In China, there was a lottery fraud in 2005. Zhao Liqun worked as the lottery agent and he detected a flaw in the system. He found out that he could print a ticket containing the winning number after they were drawn. So, he printed a large number of tickets and asked them to claim the prize so that the scam doesn’t get detected.

Regardless of that the scam had been discovered. So, Liqun was arrested. He earned about $3.8 million from the scam.

3. The Maine Lottery Scam

In this scam, a store clerk at a lottery location. Generally, the clerk works alone since it is the easiest way to pull off a scam. A customer comes in and asks him to run the ticket through the terminal to check if there is a winner. Then they clear the ticket and tell the customers that it didn’t win any prize and hold on to the ticket. But in reality, the ticket had a winner.

4. Ontario Lottery Scandal

Another similar thing happened in Canada involving the Ontario Lottery. Chung’s family had a store where they sold lottery tickets. But whenever someone came with a winning ticket, they would keep it, saying it hasn’t won any. Later, they would go on to claim the same winning prize.

Several years later Ontario Police started investigating lottery vendors claiming a large number of tickets. This is how the fraud was revealed.

5. Weighted Lottery Balls

Nick Perry in 1980 came up with a weighted lottery balls plan. He was the host of the Philadelphia lottery. Hence, he could easily switch the balls. His idea worked since he had a winning ticket. However, the authorities looked into an unusual pattern. Even though he never won a prize, they failed to convict Perry.

6. Eddie Tripton’s Scam

Eddie Tipton is the one who designed the Multi-State Lottery Association’s software that was used in 2010. But a small program had been installed in the software for predicting the winning numbers.

Tipton was able to pull off this scam for a very long time and received money by claiming prizes on many lotteries. But he made a mistake and was arrested.

7. Dan Tim Poulin Scam

A woman from Illinois received a message on Facebook that she has won $40000 in the Mega Millions game. So, she contacted them on the given number. But she was asked to send them a processing fee to expedite the amount transfer to her account. It was a popular email scam.

But she never received the money. Then she called the Maine Lottery and explained what happened. After checking all the details, they confirmed that it was indeed a scam.

8. Unclaimed Prizes

In 1988, Henry Rich, a computer expert, worked on the software used by the Pennsylvania lottery. He would then access the unclaimed prizes and forge a ticket. But the scam was uncovered when his friend came up to claim the ticket.

9. Stolen by Security

Arkansas Scholarship Lottery’s security member stole lottery scratch tickets. According to the reports, he was doing that from 2009 to 2012. He was able to claim over $500K. Later on, he was caught and he pleaded guilty.

• Phone Scam

A scammer once contacted a potential victim through the phone. He said he is calling from the customs and said that the wins are held on behalf of the victim and once he pays the taxes, the cash prize will be released. Even though the winner paid the taxes on the given account number, he never received the winning prize.

Bottom Line

Even though most of the scams take place offline, you need to be careful when getting tickets online for the India play lottery. Also, learn which the best site to get your ticket is.