Facebook post offers $1,000 from $3.4m lotto win for sharing – Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

Facebook users are falling for a post that purports to be from a recent $3.4 million lottery winner who claims to be giving away $1,000 to the first 100,000 that share a post.

The post was published by a user name Billy Rogers, and can be seen below.

As some of you may know I am the recent $3.4 million lotto winner. I’d like to spread some positivity so I’m sending $1,000 to the first 100k people that share this ☺️ ☺️ ☺️ Comment done after you shared

At the time of writing, the post has over 90,000 shares.

Using a lottery win as bait to trick users into engaging with a Facebook post and sharing it onto their own timeline is a well-worn variant of like-farming. Spammers have been using that trick for years, even going as far as digitally altering photos of “winning” lottery tickets.

In this case, Billy Rogers has simply edited a screenshot apparently showing his healthy PayPal balance.


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However, Billy’s editing skills are demonstrably better than this maths skills, since if he really did give $1,000 to the first 100,000 people who share a post, he’d end up giving away $100 million. Substantially more than he claimed to have won.

Of course, this is just like-farming. Looking through Billy’s previous posts reveals a cluster of equally spurious content, including many posts that state typing “amen” on the post will “make you rich.”

It’s all just bait to trick user’s into sharing a post so the like-farmer can have their posts go viral and can accumulate followers. There is no lotto winner, and sharing a post isn’t going to bag you a portion of a lottery win. Please stop engaging with this type of nonsense, since you open yourself up to more serious scams.

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