Montana Lottery Warns of Scams: Avoid Playing These Numbers

There is something about having a lottery ticket in your pocket that brings you hope. You find yourself thinking about how your life would change if your numbers would just come in. Daydreaming about what the first thing you would buy with your winnings. Trying to decide how many bathrooms in your mansion will have gold-plated toilets. (Okay, maybe that is just me.)

Didn't Play? Can't Win!

Montana Lottery recently released a statement about possible lottery scams in the Treasure State. Scammers are calling residents and informing them that they won the lottery. Trying to convince potential victims to "pay taxes and fees" upfront before receiving their prize money.

According to the Montana Lottery

A legitimate Lottery, like the Montana Lottery, or Lotto game, like Powerball or Montana Cash, will NEVER contact players about winning tickets. We do not know who holds a winning ticket until it is claimed at our claim center. A legitimate Lottery never asks winners to pay taxes or fees upfront. All federal and state taxes are paid before the Lottery releases the money to the winner.

 

Most importantly, if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win. That should make it really easy to sniff out whether or not you are being scammed.

Just remember your odds of winning the Powerball are 1 in 302,575,350, and your odds of winning Mega Millions are 1 in 292,201,338. You have better odds of being attacked by a bear and struck by lightning... At the same time

However, if you do plan on buying some lotto tickets, maybe this will help. Justgamblers.com released a "strategy" for playing the lotto that could slightly help your odds.

The website crunched the data to come up with what lottery numbers are statistically called the least amount.