I'm worried I've received a letter/email/phonecall from a scammer. What should I do?

Periodically, fraudsters will run lottery scams. Sometimes, these scams can involve an individual posing as People's Postcode Lottery. The scammers contact members of the public by letter, email, phonecall or SMS message. The scammers will then claim that their target is a winner of a special lottery award or similar. To ensure that any prize mentioned is a real win with People's Postcode Lottery, check out all wins for your postcode in our Postcode Search. The fraudsters will often then ask for payment or your bank details before they will transfer any 'winnings'.

The most important thing to know is that if you win People's Postcode Lottery, you will never be asked to make any form of payment to claim your prize. If you receive a call and are concerned, hang up and call us directly on 0808 109 8765.

We are also aware of instances of nuisance callers and criminals deliberately changing the caller ID, a practice known as 'spoofing'.  In these cases, your caller ID displays a telephone number connected to People's Postcode Lottery, but the phonecall is not from us. The scammers then ask for information about bank accounts or payments.

One number being 'spoofed' is 0800 123 456, which is an inbound telephone number for members of the public to contact our Customer Experience department. This is not an outbound number that People's Postcode Lottery uses to contact players.

People's Postcode Lottery warns the public that these communications are scams and should be ignored.

We encourage anyone who has encountered a scam to report it to Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud reporting centre. For more information visit www.actionfraud.police.uk.