Rich Hanson did not win the Powerball

Rich Hanson is the name of yet another prankster who claims to have won the Powerball on January 13th, 2015. However, Rich Hanson did not win the Powerball. Rich Hanson has taken to social media and even created a change.org petition claiming that he was won the Powerball and will be giving away $10,000 to people who share his “winning” Facebook post. Obviously this is not true since Rich Hanson did not win the Powerball.

Rich Hanson created a Facebook page called “An act of Kindness – lotto giveaway” and even started an online petition (that currently has no content on it) which claims that he will give away $10,000. Rich Hanson claims that if you share his post that you will receive $10,000 from him. The post he wants people to share is an edited image of Rich Hanson holding a Powerball ticket with the winning numbers. The image was obviously edited with software like Photoshop. The ticket does not contain lines B through E which is an immediate confirmation that the image is doctored. Rich Hanson also has many random images that look Photoshopped, including an image of him standing next to a lion. Even though the winning Powerball ticket image is obviously a fake the fact that Rich Hanson is comfortable with Photoshop helps debunk the Rich Hanson hoax even further.

UPDATE: And then there’s this:

And this:

Rich Hanson does not live in a state where winning tickets were purchased. Rich Hanson lives in Virginia and the winning tickets are from California, Tennessee, and Florida. Some of the winners including John and Lisa Robinson have already been identified.

The Rich Hanson hoax is simply a joke by Rich Hanson. It is not a malicious like-farming scam, survey-scam, or other type of scam that hijacks your Facebook account and posts on your behalf like the JohnAndLisaGiveBack scam. Rich Hanson purely wants to prank people and have a few laughs at the expense of others. It is unethical, deceptive, weird, and crazy, but it is also harmless compared to other similar hoaxes and scams.

There have been many Powerball hoaxes with people like Matthew Kimball and Rickstarr Ferragamo also claiming to have won the Powerball. These people also fraudulently state that they will give away their earnings to people who share their posts.

Don’t be fooled by the latest round of Powerball scams and hoaxes. If it sounds to good to be true it probably is! Do your research before you like, share, promote, or comment on anything. Do not share your personal information or fill out online surveys.