Mississippi Lottery Corporation President Jeffrey Hewitt has warned its players not to fall for scam phone calls in relation to lottery winnings.
As reported by SuperTalk Mississippi, Hewitt appeared on The Gallo Show to reach out to players not to fall for phone calls claiming that they had won the lottery.
“We don’t call anybody,” he noted. “We have no idea who could have bought a winning ticket. Our system is very sophisticated.
“We do know where that was sold because it does leave a footprint, but we have no idea who the player was. There’s no way we could contact people to ask them to come in, or give us your checking account number, which is probably the worst one. Don’t do that over the phone, we would never have you do that.”
It comes as reports of lottery frauds have made headlines in recent weeks. Last week, two men were jailed after they had attempted to cash in a £4m scratch card winning they had bought from a stolen debit card.
The two fraudsters were only caught when they admitted that neither of them had a bank account for the winnings to go to, despite having paid for the ticket with a debit card.
Furthermore, a local Sherriff in Michigan has investigated reports of fraudulent credit card lottery ticket purchases across the state.
The reports allege that two men bought masses of scratch-off tickets priced between $3,600 and $5,000. It is only several days after the purchase that the stores realise that the credit cards used to purchase the tickets are stolen.
