Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov: what a letter saying you won a prize is really asking you to pay for

A genuine prize draw exists to give money away. The organiser has already covered the prize, the printing and the postage before any winner is chosen. A lawful draw settles its own costs long before a letter goes out.

A payment demanded first by a letter saying you won a prize inverts that order. The fee comes before the item, and the item never actually arrives once it is paid. Money is now moving towards the sender, and the transaction has stopped resembling a prize.

Anyone can spot this without an expert. A cheque, a gift card or a car key needs no customs release, no notary charge and no unlocking fee to reach its owner. A letter that inserts a paid step between the win and the item has described its whole business model in one line.

Recipients often search for this because of one detail: no memory of entering anything. A warranty card, an old competition, a public directory or a leaked customer list can all seed a mailing list that gets copied and resold for years. None of those lists require any current relationship with the sender.

A name and postal address are enough to make a letter read as personal. Real lottery and prize brand names get borrowed without permission because a recognisable name does the persuading a blank page cannot. The absence of a memory of entering is simply the normal starting condition for everyone on that list.

Once a household receives one such letter, a second and third usually follow from unrelated senders, since list brokers sell the same names many times over. For that reason, a letter saying you won a prize rarely arrives alone. A second one within weeks of the first is good evidence of a shared list circulating.

Every version of this letter names the payment differently. Customs duty, a delivery charge, an insurance bond, a tax or an unlock fee are the same request wearing different labels. Each label just offers a plausible reason why a normally free transaction suddenly needs money flowing the other way.

The label is chosen mainly for how convincing it sounds. Genuine customs duty is billed afterward by the postal or courier service through its own paperwork, never inside the letter revealing the prize. A real tax on a cash prize is deducted before payment, handled by the payer's own accounts department.

At that point, a letter saying you won a prize and asking for a fee has told you the entire plan. The prize is only ever the reason offered for the payment. Remove the fee request and there is no letter left worth writing.

A seal resembling a national emblem, a court-style reference number, a fictitious claims officer and a barcode that scans to nothing are all cheap to produce. A working template gets reused for years across thousands of households. None of it is ever checked against a real registry by the person reading it.

Real courier firms and national lotteries get named without their knowledge, since a familiar logo persuades faster than plain text ever could. A foreign country is often chosen for the draw specifically because a claim from abroad is harder to verify. None of that packaging costs the sender more than a stamp.

A printed QR code has become a common addition, swapping a phone number for a link that opens on a smaller screen with fewer visible warnings. Scanning it moves the interaction onto a page built by the same sender, away from anywhere the claim could be checked. Most recipients never notice the switch from paper to screen.

Paying the first fee named in a letter saying you won a prize simply produces a second request. A tax appears where a delivery charge stood before, or an unlock fee follows a customs charge already supposedly settled. Every request arrives labelled as the final step, and another follows regardless.

A separate branch of the same family of schemes moves the collection in person once a phone relationship exists. A courier arrives to collect cash or gold bars directly, bypassing any bank or wire transfer that might raise a question. A face-to-face handover feels far more reassuring to the person paying.

Money paid for a customs release or a processing charge is never returned when the promised parcel fails to appear. The same contact details are usually reused or resold for a fresh attempt months later under a different prize name. A household that has paid once becomes a more valuable target than one that never has.

Losses reported by people aged 60 and over rose roughly fourfold on Federal Trade Commission figures, from about 600 million dollars in 2020 to 2.4 billion in 2024. Built for postal delivery to a generation that trusts what a letterbox brings, a letter saying you won a prize is one of the older formats behind that rise. It needs no email address and no familiarity with a browser.

Among older people who each lost 100,000 dollars or more, the combined total climbed eightfold, from 55 million dollars in 2020 to 445 million in 2024. Among those who lost 10,000 dollars or more to a company or government impersonator, 33 per cent paid in cryptocurrency, 20 per cent by wire transfer and 16 per cent in cash. Those figures describe people already drawn well past a first small fee.

The pattern reflects a format matched to a household that answers its own post, keeps a landline, and trusts an official-looking seal more than a text message. Scammers choose the postal prize letter as a strategy aimed precisely at that household. The match between format and target explains far more than any lapse in the reader's judgement.

The Federal Trade Commission recorded no financial loss at all in four out of five impersonation reports. Ignoring a letter like this correctly is simply the ordinary outcome. The scheme behind it reaches thousands of addresses for the cost of postage alone, so only a small fraction of replies keeps it paying for itself.

The number printed on the letter belongs to whoever wrote it, so calling it only confirms what the letter already claims. Any prize, tax office or courier named in it can be reached through its own publicly listed number, found independently. A genuine winning entry survives being checked slowly through channels the winner chose.

Send no payment, no card details and no scan of an identity document in reply. Keep the letter and its envelope, since the postmark and any reference number are useful if the attempt gets reported. A local consumer protection body or postal inspection service will usually take a copy.

The most useful habit sits outside any single letter. Mention it to whoever else opens post in the household, especially an older relative living alone, so the next version under a different prize name gets the same calm response on sight. A household that has talked about one letter openly tends to bin the next one without a second thought.

Why do I keep getting a letter saying you won a prize when I never entered anything?

These letters are built from mailing lists bought and resold from old warranty cards, directories, leaked customer records and past competitions, none of which require a current relationship with the sender. Entering was never part of how the list was built, which is why the letter can reach a household that has never played anything of the kind.

Why would a real prize ever need me to pay a fee first?

It would not, because a genuine prize draw settles its own printing, postage and prize costs before a winner is ever chosen. Any request for a customs charge, a tax or a processing fee before the item arrives describes the entire scheme in one sentence.

What happens if I already paid the fee they asked for?

A second and usually a third request follows under a different label, such as a tax after a delivery charge or an unlocking fee after a customs charge. The parcel or cash prize does not arrive at any point, and the same contact details are often reused later for a fresh attempt under a new prize name.

Is it safe to call the phone number printed on the letter?

The number belongs to whoever wrote the letter, so a call to it only confirms what the letter already claims. Any organisation named in the letter, from a courier firm to a tax office, can be reached through its own publicly listed number found independently of the page you were sent.

Can a real lottery or courier company be named in a scam letter without knowing about it?

Yes, a recognisable brand name is borrowed specifically because it saves the sender the work of building trust from nothing, and the real organisation usually has no record of the letter at all. Checking directly with that organisation through its own official channel will usually show the letter has nothing to do with it.

How do I report a letter saying you won a prize?

Keep the letter and its envelope, including the postmark and any reference number, and pass a copy to a local consumer protection body or postal inspection service. Recovering a payment already made is rare once it has gone through, so reporting mainly protects other people who receive the same letter next by flagging the address and any phone number involved.