Prize fraud

How to spot a prize scam: real prizes are never paid for

A call or a text saying you won thousands of dollars, a car or a holiday — while you never entered anything — is one of the oldest scams that still works, because the news is pleasant enough to act on before you think. The US Federal Trade Commission describes the pattern plainly: if you reply, you are told you must pay for "processing fees" or "taxes" to get the prize, and no matter what they say, real sweepstakes have free prizes; any money you send goes to a scammer's pocket and there is no prize (FTC, don't pay for a prize).

The rule that breaks every variant is short: a genuine lottery or competition never asks for money or data up front, and nobody has to pay "notary costs", "tax" or "administration" to receive a prize they actually won.

Direct answer: five checks before you respond to a prize message

1. Did you enter? No ticket, no sign-up and no competition you joined means there is no prize to win. Check your own participation first, not the message.
2. If you have to pay to get your prize, it is a scam. The FTC lists three signs: paying to receive a prize, paying to increase your odds of winning (real sweepstakes are free and winning is by chance, and it is illegal to charge for better odds), and having to hand over financial or personal information to claim it (FTC, fake prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams; FTC).
3. Never send a copy of your passport or ID to claim a prize. That is exactly what such a copy is used for: identity fraud, with loans or subscriptions taken out in your name. The Dutch Fraud Helpdesk advises never sending copies of official documents and points to the national identity-fraud reporting point for people who already did (Fraud Helpdesk, I won a prize).
4. Do not click; verify the promotion yourself. Look the company up through its own website or a number you found yourself, never through the link or the number in the message. Watch for look-alike names: the FTC records scammers inventing bodies such as a "National Sweepstakes Bureau" or pretending to be the FTC itself, and states that no real sweepstakes company asks for money to release a prize (FTC). Delete the message without clicking links, and do not reply.
5. Treat urgency and the channel as the mechanism — also on the phone. Scammers say it is a limited offer and rush you so that you have no time to think (FTC). The phone variant is prosecuted in the Netherlands: in August 2025 police arrested further suspects in a case in which criminals posed as employees of the National Postcode Lottery and made more than one hundred and eighty victims in a year, with reported losses of over EUR 350,000 (politie.nl).

Why AI made this cheaper to produce

Fake prize messages are not new, but the production side has changed: a language model writes a flawless message in the tone of a large brand, and a logo with matching house style is copied in minutes. The mistake is no longer in the language or the layout, but in two questions you can answer yourself: does the promotion exist, and is the sender who it says it is? That is why the checks above sit with the claim and the sender, not with how polished the message reads.

What a detector does and does not see

A prize message is text, sometimes with a logo or a screenshot attached. You can run the text through the text detector and the image through the image detector. That is triage: it tells you which message to verify first, and it gives you a signal you can keep for a report. It says nothing about the promotion. Templated text holds too little writing style for a reliable signal, and a hand-made message can stay entirely silent. A low score never proves the prize exists.

What you cannot tell from a prize message

• whether the promotion or lottery actually exists and whether you entered it;
• whether the sender works for that company, even when the name, logo and layout match;
• whether a prize, voucher or sum of money is waiting for you;
• whether this is fraud; only investigators, a bank or a regulator can establish that.

So treat the message as a reason to run your own check, never as evidence that you have won something.

If you already paid or sent information

• Contact your bank the same day if you transferred money or filled in payment details; speed decides whether a payment can still be blocked or recalled.
• Keep the message, the sender, the link, the time and the amounts — that is what makes a report useful.
• If you sent a copy of your passport, ID card or driving licence, report it to the national identity-fraud desk (Fraud Helpdesk).
• Report it: the FTC asks people to file at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and in the Netherlands you report to the Fraud Helpdesk and, with losses, to the police (FTC).
• If you entered data on a fake page, change that password and any account that shares it.

More checks are in the guides on a fake debt collection letter (an unrecognised claim that sometimes names a lottery), a fake investment platform (paying to release your own money) and a fake QR code (a competition behind a code). To check a message or a file on its own, use the free checker.

Frequently asked questions

I never entered anything. Can I still have won?

No. A prize belongs to an entry you can point to: a ticket, a sign-up or a competition you took part in. Without an entry there is no prize, however believable the message looks.

The message uses a real brand name and logo. Doesn't that make it real?

No. Scammers deliberately use names that sound like well-known sweepstakes or companies, and the Dutch Fraud Helpdesk sees messages pretending to come from large brands that have nothing to do with them. A logo is an image anyone can copy; only the organisation itself can confirm the promotion exists.

Does a high detector score prove a prize message is fake?

No, and a low score does not prove it is real either. The score describes patterns in a text or a file and says nothing about the promotion, the sender or whether a prize exists.