Lottery Scams
Lottery, like any form of gambling, is susceptible to fraud, despite the high degree of scrutiny offered by the organizers. One method involved is to tamper with the machine used for the number selection. By rigging a machine, it is theoretically easy to win a lottery. This act is often done in connivance with an employee of the lottery firm. Methods used vary; loaded balls where select balls are made to pop-up making it either lighter or heavier than the rest. Many other ingenious methods too have been employed.
Some advance fee fraud scams on the Internet are based on lotteries. The modus operandi of this fraud is that the trickster sends spam to all email users in their database congratulating them on their recent lottery win. Then they proceed to announce that in order to release funds they must part with a certain amount (as tax/fees) as per the rules or risk forfeiture.
Another form of lottery scam involves the selling of "systems" which purport to improve a player's chances of selecting the winning numbers in a Lotto game. These scams are generally based on the buyer's (and perhaps the seller's) misunderstanding of probability and random numbers. Sale of these systems or software is legal, however, since they mention that the product cannot guarantee a win, let alone a jackpot.