Ignore that message claiming a lottery winner randomly selected you to receive thousands of dollars. That is a scam.
Scammers are posing as someone working for 'Scott Godfrey', the man who bought the winning Powerball ticket for the drawing worth nearly $700 million in Morro Bay.
KSBY first warned you about this scam in March. Since then, we've heard from more people targeted by scammers.
Godfrey has made it clear -- he has given money away to help charitable organizations addressing hunger and homelessness and he is not giving money away to individuals.
But the Better Business Bureau's scam tracker shows there have been at least 38 more reports of crooks still using his name since our story aired.
Scammers are using fake names, various phone numbers and email addresses to try and trick people across the country. They're asking potential victims to pay a fee, send their personal information and even IDs to claim their "prize".
California Lottery officials say -- do not respond and do not click on links in unsolicited texts or emails.
Carolyn Becker, a spokesperson for the California Lottery, says:
"Our security team takes steps to try to figure out the source of it. As you know that is very difficult because a lot of times, scammers will spoof phone numbers. they have really sophisticated ways of faking caller IDs. So once we determine that we can't really figure out where it came from, there's nothing we can really do except to continue to educate people to make sure people know to be suspicious of text messages like this."
The FBI says in many cases scammers are located out of the country or outside the legal jurisdiction of scam victims -- making it hard for law enforcement to track cyber criminals and prosecute them. if you have been a victim of a scam -- you can file a report with police or with the FBI through IC3.gov
The California Lottery has a customer service phone line, 1-800-lottery, for people to call if they see fraudulent activity and/or need assistance with a claim.
You can also file a report with the Federal Trade Commission.
