Powerball jackpot winner hoaxes hit social media

Share my Facebook post for a share of the Powerball jackpot winnings? If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

After news hit that the Powerball over in the United States managed to find 3 lucky winners to split the staggering $1.6 billion jackpot, there was an air of inevitability as to what would happen next.

Social media has been plagued with like-farmers, self-promoting marketers and online pranksters all claiming to have the winning ticket. And of course they’re all going to share the winnings with you… providing you share their “winning ticket photo”, of course.

Cue a surge of ‘photoshopped’ images purporting to show one of those lucky tickets. This isn’t the first time these Powerball hoaxes are spread of course. They’ve been spreading for years and many have accumulated a very large number of shares from Facebook users gullible enough to think they’re real.

In the case of the January 2016 Powerball winnings, perhaps the most successful “I won the Powerball, share my photo” hoax to go viral was from online prankster Rickstarr ‘@RickStarrXO’ Ferragamo who – at the time of writing – has amassed almost a million shares to his post purportedly showing his winning ticket which you can see below.

I am picking 10 random people who share this photo and giving them $10,000 each. CALL ME CRAZY BUT GOD is GOOD!
I WASNT GOING TO PUT THIS ON FB BUT I COULDNT HOLD IT AND I STILL CANT BELIEVE THIS!!! I WON $1.5 BILLION. MY FAMILY HAS BEEN CRYING FOR HOURS.
THE WINNER : Instagram: Rickstarrxo Snapchat: RickstarrLife
FOLLOW ME ON INSTRAGRAM: rickstarrxo

At the time of writing, his post accumulated well over 400 thousand shares and rising quickly.

RickStarrXO claims to be from New York City, and it states New York on his “winning” ticket. However the winners actually hailed from California, Florida and Tennessee. So it doesn’t look like Rick won this time.

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But he isn’t the only one to try and capitalise on the Powerball winnings to lure followers. Erik Bragg also got in on the act and posted his own “winning” ticket, this time on Instragram. His ticket displayed California on it, so it could potentially have been a winner… if it wasn’t for the fact that Bragg’s Photoshop skills leave something to be desired… clear digital cloning traces are left underneath the number 2, and he didn’t delete the letters on the left denoting that the ticket should have had five lines of numbers, not one. Oops.

OMG I WON $1.5 BILLION!!!!! I’m posting this in case anyone tries to jack me this is proof! Look it up, I bought in chino hills where I grew up! #powerball

Matthew Kimball from Florida also got in on the act, posting another “winning ticket” with the following caption.

OMG I CAN NOT BELIEVE I WON!!!!
I TOOK IT INTO THE STORE TO CONFIRM AND THE LADY ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK!!!
IM GIVING HER A MILLION DOLLARS!! TIME TO GIVE BACK TO MY COUNTRY!!!
ANYONE WHO SHARES AND LIKES THIS POST I WILL BE GIVING YOU $15,000 DOLLARS!!

A number of other photos have been uploaded onto social media, all photoshopped and trying to capitalise on the gullibility of others into sharing a photo to get free money. Needless to say, they’re all hoaxes.

Funnily enough, we doubt the first thing that will go through a person’s mind after discovering they’ve won hundreds of millions of dollars is going to involve going onto social media with an image of their winning ticket with the caption that they’ll share the money for people who share their post.

So perhaps it is time to stop sharing this nonsense.

Right, now you’ve read this… share this story on Facebook and receive … well, nothing really.