Mega Millions Lottery Scam Warning To Marylanders: Authorities

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Attorney General Brian Frosh is warning consumers of a Mega Millions lottery scam letter targeting Marylanders. The letter uses a counterfeit lottery logo in an effort to convince residents that they can claim a windfall if they wire money from their bank account to the scammers.

According to a news release, the letter claims the recipient has won the Mega Millions International Lottery 2019 Draw. Faked logos of Mega Millions and the United Nations are used in the letter, Frosh's office said, and recipients are told to call a foreign number or send an email to claim their lottery winnings. The mailing has a deadline for the recipient to contact the lottery company to pay a percentage of the purported winnings via electronic transfer.

"The sender of the letter has no affiliation with the Mega Millions Consortium, which is the group of United States Lotteries organized to jointly create and operate the multi-state lottery game known as Mega Millions," Frosh's news release said.

Here are some tips to avoid being scammed by bogus lottery letters, email, or texts.:

• Do not send money by wire, funds transfer, gift cards, or cashier’s check to anyone claiming you need to pay a fee to receive an award or lottery winnings, particularly one you didn’t specifically enter.
• Do not give your bank routing or account information to anyone so they can “deposit your winnings.” The money in your bank account could be wiped out in seconds.
• Be wary of urgent requests to act now; scammers will create a false sense of urgency to get you to respond without thinking carefully.
• Do not click on any links or call any numbers in a suspicious email or text; even if the links look official, they could redirect you to a harmful website or download viruses onto your phone or computer.
• If it looks too good to be true, like winning millions of dollars from a foreign lottery, it probably is.

Unless you specifically entered a Maryland Lottery promotion, you will never be contacted by lottery officials about a prize, Frosh's office said.

If you received one of the scam letters you can send the information to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service Mail Fraud division through https://www.uspis.gov/report/, or call 1-800-372-8347. Or you can report receiving the scam mailings to the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division (www.marylandattorneygeneral.gov) and Federal Trade Commission (https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/).