Could this surprise winning of a huge sum of money be legit?

Question

I received a call from someone claiming to be from a well-known Cashback Coupon Co. He congratulated me and told me I had been selected to receive several thousand dollars a week for life. I was then told that I was required to pay more than a thousand dollars for insurance before they could issue a check for such a large amount. I paid it. Then he informed me that I had to pay a pre-tax of $8,000 before they could give me the prize money. The whole thing felt too strange to continue, so I pulled the plug and asked for a refund. It remains to be seen if I get it.

Answer 1

The moment they want you to pay money to get "your" money, is the moment you know it is a scam. Why did they need you to pay money for an insurance policy?

so I pulled the plug and asked for a refund. It remains to be seen if I get it.

The goal was to get you to pay ever increasing amounts of money. They were only partially successful since they only took $1,000 from you.

They will not refund your money.

No group picks random people to win large sums of money.

Answer 2

No genuine lottery will ever ask you for money. Say you win £1,000,000 in the UK lottery. And because you live in a foreign country with strange tax laws £200,000 has to be paid to your tax office. Plus a £500 bank transfer fee. In that case the lottery will pay the £200,000 tax, the £500 fee, and send you £799,500. There is absolutely no way they will ask you for money.

Answer 3

This is a classic advance-fee scam. Had you paid the $8,000, they would likely have found some other fee that you needed to pay (or simply disappeared with the money).

The original $1,000 is gone and will not be refunded.

Also, I will repeat what I pointed out here: this "insurance" makes no sense. Insurance insures against some catastrophic outcome (like getting in a car accident or having your house flooded in a natural disaster). What's actually being insured against, and how is the insurance supposed to work? There is no such thing as insurance for issuing large checks. I issued a check for the entire amount when I purchased my last car, and I issued several large checks when I purchased my house. At no point was insurance ever discussed.

Other answers have already pointed this out, but even if "issuing a large check insurance" was a real thing (it's not), they could simply deduct the insurance fee from the amount they were going to issue you. There is no reason that you need to send them money for this.