The Federal Trade Commission’s consumer-protection staff published an alert on October 26, 2026 warning that scammers are posing as well-known charities and telling recipients they won a charity-sponsored sweepstakes because they donated. The alert’s central rule is short: real prizes are free, so any demand for payment settles the question. A second tell sits right behind it, a request for the recipient’s Social Security number.
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The alert names no specific charity or sweepstakes and reports no loss figures, which makes it a checklist of warning signs rather than an account of one campaign. Its value is in how many separate tells it packs into a few paragraphs, and in the fact that each one can be checked by a person holding the phone.
The five tells the FTC lists
The FTC consumer alert, signed by BCP Staff, gives five signs. The first is being asked to pay to claim a prize. The second is a request for a Social Security number or other personal information, since only scammers demand either one, according to the alert. The third is a claim that someone won because of a donation. The fourth is caller ID that has been spoofed to show a real agency or company name. The fifth is a paid search ad that leads to false information, which the alert says impersonators place on platforms such as Google Search and Bing.
The payment tell also carries a legal point. The alert says legitimate sweepstakes are free and based on chance, and that asking someone to pay or buy something to enter, or to improve the odds of winning, is illegal.
The agency’s longer guide, Fake Prize, Sweepstakes, and Lottery Scams, fills in what the payment demand looks like. Scammers often label the fee as taxes, shipping, processing or customs duties, and they ask for it through wire transfers such as Western Union or MoneyGram, payment apps including Apple Pay, Cash App, PayPal and Zelle, cash, gift cards or cryptocurrency. The guide repeats the same line as the alert: real prizes are free. It adds that bank account numbers, credit card numbers and Social Security numbers should never be given out to claim a prize.
Impersonated charities and paid search ads
Scammers in this pattern borrow either a real charity name or one that only sounds similar. The alert advises researching the organization, searching its name alongside words such as “complaint,” “review” or “scam,” and not relying on the first results that appear. Because impersonators buy ads on Google Search and Bing, the alert says to scroll past the paid results before trusting a listing.
Caller ID gets its own warning. Scammers can fake it, the alert says, so a display showing a real agency or company name proves nothing about who is on the line.
The warning is not new, only newly applied to charities. In a March 14, 2025 consumer alert on a mailed million-dollar prize offer, the FTC said that no real company charges a fee to claim a prize and that only a scammer does, and that anyone who pays loses the money and finds there is no prize. That alert offered a check for mailed offers as well: a bulk-rate postmark suggests a mass mailing sent to many recipients at once. It also told readers to search the contest or company name with words such as “review” and “complaint.”
What recipients can do after paying
The FTC’s guide to what to do after a scam, last modified August 21, 2026, sorts the response by how the money moved. A payment made by Zelle or bank transfer should be reported to the bank or credit union immediately with a request to reverse it. A payment app such as Venmo, Cash App or PayPal should be told right away. For a gift card, the person should contact the card issuer using the number on the card, explain that a scammer obtained the card number and PIN, and keep the card and receipt. Cash sent by U.S. mail can sometimes be intercepted by the Postal Inspection Service for a fee if the package has not been delivered.
The same guide draws a line between card types and cryptocurrency. Federal law protects against unauthorized use of a credit card, and the article says the same protection applies to debit cards, while cryptocurrency payments do not carry the same legal protections. Scammers pick hard-to-trace methods on purpose, the guide says, which is why speed matters.
Reports go to the FTC through its fraud reporting site. The fake-prize guide also points to a state attorney general and local consumer protection office, to the Postal Inspection Service when the offer arrived by mail, and to IdentityTheft.gov when personal information was handed over.
The same payment-first pattern runs through another FTC alert, published March 5, 2026, on government grant scams. That alert says agencies that award grants will not demand a fee, that grants are not awarded for personal needs, and that agencies do not contact people about grants they never applied for. In both alerts the FTC treats a request for money before any prize or grant arrives as the point at which the offer is settled as a scam.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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