John And Lisa Give Back Scams

In recent days, a number of websites have appeared that claim that Powerball winners John and Lisa Robinson are giving away a portion of their winnings to Internet users. John and Lisa Robinson of Tennessee in the United States, really did win a very large prize in the Powerball lottery. However, despite the claims in the bogus pages put up in their names, they are certainly not randomly giving away money to strangers via the Internet.

In fact, these ‘John and Lisa Give Back’ sites are scams designed to trick you into spamming your friends with the same fraudulent material and divulging your personal information via dodgy online surveys.

If you click the link in one of the Facebook posts promoting the scam, you will be taken to a web page that claims that John and Lisa are giving away cash to a set number of ‘lucky’ strangers. The page will most likely feature a – completely bogus – countdown that supposedly reveals how many cash giveaways are remaining. The countdown number will automatically go down as you view the page. Of course, the countdown is not really reflecting how many giveaways are left. It is simply designed to get people to hurry up and participate in the mistaken belief that they might miss out of they don’t act quickly.

To make it seem a little more credible, the scam page will also feature a number of comments from people claiming that they have already collected their cash. However, the comments are fake.

The page firstly asks you to share the page’s link via social media as a means of inviting your friends to join in. After you have successfully exposed your social media friends to the scam in this way, a ‘cash claim’ link will appear on the page. Clicking the link supposedly takes you to a page where you can ‘get your cash instantly’. But, instead, a window will pop up that claims that, before getting your cash, you must first ‘verify’ your claim by participating in an online survey. The popup will contain links to several surveys.

The links open third-party websites that promise prizes in exchange for filling in a survey and providing your name, home address, email address, and phone numbers. However, fine print on the page will state that, by participating, you are giving permission for your personal information to be shared with ‘site sponsors’ and marketing companies. Thus, soon after participating, you will begin receiving unwanted and annoying phone calls, text messages, letters, and emails trying to sell you various products and services.

Meanwhile, the scammers who created the fake ‘John and Lisa Give Back’ pages will earn commissions each and every time somebody provides his or her information on one of the survey sites.

And, of course, no matter how many surveys you fill in, you will never get to claim the promised cash giveaway.

Given the size of John and Lisa’s Powerball win and the amount of publicity it has received all around the world, new variations of these scams will likely continue to appear in coming weeks. In fact, almost every time a large lottery win is publicized, scammers pretending to be the winners will attempt to trick people into sending money and personal information.

Be very wary of any message or website that claims that lottery winners are randomly giving away portions of their winnings to total strangers via the Internet or email.

While many lottery winners are very generous and may well give away some of their winnings to charity or to help the less fortunate, it is vastly unlikely that they would ever decide to simply hand out large wads of cash willy nilly via the Internet. Any such claim should be treated with immediate suspicion.