You get a call or a voicemail stating that you’ve won a sweepstakes or even a lottery. The prize is something exciting or fantastic - money, a vacation to an exotic expensive locale, or a free, expensive car.

But of course, they can’t send you your prize if you don’t pay fees or taxes to them first. Sometimes, they need your bank account and other information (such as a social security number) to file things with a local or national tax authority, such as the IRS.

And of course, you never get the expensive item.

How to protect yourself
Neither legit sweepstakes nor lotteries require any sort of payment or purchase to get a prize. (Even those that want you to buy an item first will have a free entry method such as mailing in a card or making an entry on a form.) They also don’t require private banking information or sensitive items such as a social security number or similar.

For that matter, lotteries do not know who chose winning numbers or bought a winning scratch-off card.

Like many other scams, researching the company to verify it exists, as well as the phone number, might indicate if you are one of many people getting a message with a supposedly amazing prize. And if it is a well known company (such as Publisher’s Clearing House), you can always contact them to verify how legit the message is.

If this comes in via a phone call, have them give you a callback number and then hang up. Don’t make any decisions or give any information before verifying things first.