Imagine answering your door one day to find a crowd of strangers with balloons and TV cameras handing you a check for a million dollars. As fantasies go, they don’t come much bigger and shinier than that. Yet, however implausible it may sound at first blush, Publishers Clearing House (PCH) actually does this.
The whole thing veers perilously close to the kind of “if it’s too good to be true” territory your parents (and us here on the Compass blog!) warn you about, but Publishers Clearing House is a legitimate marketing company that’s been around for decades. Unfortunately, scammers often leverage the familiar sweepstakes’ name recognition to relieve you of your own money.
What Is Publishers Clearing House?
PCH has been around since the 1950s, starting out as a direct mail advertising alternative to door-to-door magazine sales. They’ve gone through a number of changes in the last 70 years, but one thing that has kept them on the map is the very thing that helped them find massive success: giveaway sweepstakes.
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The iconic sweepstakes started in 1967 as a way to drive sales, and quickly became a mainstay of the company’s marketing. The path hasn’t always been smooth — the company has been accused of misleading marketing, and paid numerous settlements as a consequence — but the sweepstakes and the company are legitimate. You can enter the sweepstakes in many ways, prizes are awarded as advertised (if you read the very fine print), and ordinary people do indeed find the Prize Patrol arriving at their door to surprise them with an oversized check.
More simply put, PCH is a direct-marketing company that started out selling subscriptions and merchandise, and has since moved to generating most of its revenue from websites, online advertising, and a variety of games and apps. Their iconic sweepstakes is simply an advertising tactic that was developed to gain name awareness and a way to get people to sign up for advertising campaigns.
Is Publishers Clearing House a Scam?
While there are plenty of scams that criminals have developed around PCH, PCH itself is not a scam. PCH is a real company that does, in fact, host legitimate sweepstakes.
How Does Publishers Clearing House Notify Winners?
Depending on the size of the prize, there are a few different ways PCH notifies its winners. Most smaller prize winners will be notified via mail. For bigger prizes (over $10k), the PCH Prize Patrol will show up at your door with balloons and roses.
It’s worth noting that PCH will never call you, never require you to pay to claim a prize, and won’t ask for any information besides your date of birth, name, address, and email. If you’ve been notified that you won a PCH sweepstakes but aren’t sure if it’s real, the only number you should call to confirm is PCH’s actual customer service line at 1-800-459-4724.
How PCH Scams Work
Okay, so PCH sweepstakes are a real thing — but how do PCH scams work? It’s fairly simple: scammers use the PCH name to trick victims into believing they’ve been selected as winners. Scammers then use the excitement to catch people with their guard down, and make requests for payments (or gift cards) to claim prizes, or demand sensitive information for “verification purposes.”
Here’s how PCH scams usually go:
- You receive a call, text, or email claiming you’ve won a PCH sweepstakes (usually a large sum of money, a car, or some other high-ticket prize).
- The scammers then inform you that in order to claim the prize, you have to verify your identity by paying taxes and fees. They will then either instruct you on how to send them money or gift cards, or even have you provide sensitive private information.
- Once they have your money and/or private information, they simply disappear and leave you empty-handed.
6 Common Publisher Clearing House Scams
Most PCH scams follow a fairly similar format, but there are a few different approaches scammers will try to use. Here are some of the most common.
1. Faked “You’re a Winner” Letters
They look impressive, and they’ve got a good copy of the PCH logo. “You’ve won one of the grand prizes,” is the message, and the only catch is that you’ll need to send them a modest amount to cover fees or taxes on your winnings. Usually, they’ll request payment in the form of a transfer from Western Union or Moneygram, or on gift cards, which means it’s virtually impossible to get your money back afterwards.
2. Email Prize Announcements
Sending real mail is relatively costly, so many scammers rely on email instead. The email version of the scam can take a couple of directions:
- The first is the same as most of the other PCH scams, where they claim you’ll need to pay them in order to cover fees or taxes on your prize.
- A second is a straight-up phishing attack, providing a link to click (or a number to call), where you’ll be prompted to divulge a lot of private information on the pretext of direct-depositing the winnings into your bank account. Pro tip: You can run a reverse email search through Spokeo to learn more about suspicious email senders.
3. Scam Phone Calls
Phone scams are common because they’re cost-effective for criminals, so of course, there’s a phone-based variation on the PCH scam. The format is the same: the caller tells you you’ve won, and will cheerfully walk you through the prize-claiming process, which of course involves giving them money or your private information.
4. Text-Message Scams
This is basically the same as the email scam variations, except you receive the bogus prize notification through text messaging rather than your email inbox.
5. Social Media Outreach
Yet another variation on the theme involves direct messages and friend requests on social media from scammers claiming to be PCH, or one of the high-profile PCH employees who make up the Prize Patrol. If you respond, they’ll again hit you up for either money or private information.
6. Fake Checks
Another variation on the mail scam cuts to the chase and sends you a fake check, along with instructions to — you guessed it —send them some money to cover fees or taxes on your prize after it’s deposited. Of course, the check will eventually bounce, and you’ll be out any money you’ve sent (plus a chargeback from your bank for the bad check, which will add insult to injury).
How to Recognize Publishers Clearing House Scams
If you made it through the sections above, it’s not hard to spot the recurring theme that distinguishes all of these scams. When you win a prize, the money should flow in only one direction — into, not out of, your pocket.
If you have any doubts about what PCH does or doesn’t do when reaching out to its winners, your best bet is simply to look at the company’s own Fraud Protection page. First and foremost, the real Publishers Clearing House will never, ever, under any circumstances, ask you to pay. Period.
A few other things they don’t do:
- They won’t tell you in advance that you’ve won one of the big prizes (they really do like to surprise you at the door).
- The big-name Prize Patrol staffers won’t call, text, email, or reach out to you on social media.
- The real PCH will never ask you for financial information or your Social Security number.
- They never inform you by telephone call that you’re a winner. (Never!)
There are a few potential gray areas, since the real PCH does send email notifications if you’ve entered any of their online giveaways, and winners of the smaller prizes will often be notified by registered mail or courier. You’ll know the legitimate ones because they don’t ask for money or private information, and — an important point — you won’t receive communication unless you’ve actually entered a sweepstakes.
If You’re Contacted in a Publisher’s Clearing House Scam
If you receive one of these scam calls, texts, pieces of mail, or emails, there are a few things you should do.
- First, of course, just don’t engage. Hang up the phone, don’t deposit the check, don’t reply to the friend request, and above all, don’t click on any links. You can use a service like Spokeo to double-check the email or number contacting you is connected with PCH.
- Next, you should report the scam at the FTC’s ReportFraud website. This helps the FTC and law-enforcement agencies track how the scam evolves and where it’s actively exploited. Also, if you’ve fallen victim to the scam, it will help you create a recovery plan to minimize the damage.
Publishers Clearing House itself would love for you to file a report if you’ve been approached by a scammer. They even have their own scam report line at 1-800-392-4190 if you’d rather just inform them directly. It’s very much in their interest to draw a clear distinction between the real PCH sweepstakes and impostors, and they’ll frequently circulate information about new scams through their sites and social media feeds.
It doesn’t take long, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you may have helped others dodge a costly life lesson.
Cyrus Grant is a writer from Southern California with a background in law and dispute resolution. When he isn’t writing, he can be found deep-diving into the latest technology trends or simply spending time at the beach.