Visa Lottery U.S.A. – Fraud and Scam Warning

There are many commercial or non-government websites that deceive people into believing that they are official or approved by the U.S. government. They may even contact you by email to lure you with their offers.

There are some companies who claim to be the U.S. government and demand money to complete the green card lottery application.

Please note that the only official way to apply for the U.S. green card lottery is to apply online at the U.S. Department of State (DOS) website. Additionally, there is no fee to apply.

NOTE: immihelp^®.com is a legitimate private website not affiliated with any government agency. immihelp^®.com provides free information for U.S. immigration and never charges money nor represents the clients. Please read more about us in the Disclaimer. Therefore, immihelp^®.com should not be confused with any other websites that provide green card lottery information or charge money.

If you have been selected in the green card lottery, you will receive a confirmation by postal mail and NOT by email. Therefore, if you receive such an email, it is spam.

You should complete the online green card lottery application yourself rather than through “Visa Consultants” or “Visa Agents” or other facilitators who offer to submit an application on your behalf. In many cases, these people write their own address rather than the applicant’s address on the application. In cases where an applicant has been selected in the lottery, such facilitators get the notice rather than the applicant receiving it directly. In some cases, these facilitators would extort money from the applicants in order to provide them with the selection notification that should have gone to the applicant directly in the first place.

Some websites claim that they can increase your chance of winning the lottery. This is absolutely baseless. No one can increase the chance of you winning the lottery. Of course, a correctly entered entry has a much smaller chance of getting disqualified. However, no one can increase the chance of winning the lottery itself among qualified entries.

The U.S. government does not employ outside consultants or private services to operate the DV program. Any intermediaries or others who offer to assist in preparing DV entries do so without the authority or consent of the U.S. government. Use them entirely at your own risk.

The KCC (Kentucky Consular Center) will not ask you to send money to them by mail or services such as Western Union, travelers checks, PayPal, credit card, money order, Google Checkout, direct bank transfers, cash, personal checks, or any other financial means.

You should apply only on the internet website that has a “.gov” domain suffix, because those are official U.S. government websites. Many other non-governmental websites (e.g. using suffixes “.com”, “.org” or “.net”) provide immigration and visa-related information and services. Regardless of the content of non-government websites, the U.S. Department of State does not endorse, recommend, or sponsor any information or material shown on other sites.

Some websites may not even provide assistance in completing the online form or provide any service and just steal your money. If you send in money for one of these scams, you will never see it again.

You should be very careful about sending personal information to these websites, because they may use it for identify fraud/theft.

Some websites even claim to offer you free airfare if you apply through them and win the lottery. Use these websites at your own discretion.