I was contacted by company claiming to be Yahoo stating I won a large amount of cash via lottery. Is this authentic. I was contacted via e-mail earlier this week.

Hello, Luis -

The simple answer to your question is: Yes.

I hope I am safe in thinking you would like to know the time limit for claiming a cash prize for a lottery scratch-off ticket you hold. If so . . .

1. The claim time period may be printed on your scratch-off ticket.

2. Assuming you reside in the USA and the scratch-off lottery ticket was purchased in a state in the USA, the prize claiming time period will be dependent upon the rules for the particular state lottery. Meaning: You will need to check with the US state lottery information specific to your lottery ticket. That means you will need to go to the website of the lottery for the US state in question. The claiming time period will probably be in the FAQs section of the website of the particular state lottery.

Note: If you have no idea of the web address of the state lottery relevant to you, you can find it by using your favorite search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and the following search phrase:
"State Name" lottery
Use quotation marks (as shown above) if the state has a 2-part name:
Examples:
"South Carolina" lottery
Illinois lottery

Best wishes.

Hi Cynthia:
Unless you bought a lottery ticket and can check the numbers, the odds are it's just another SCAM.
DO NOT give out any personal banking info and DO NOT send any money.

First of all, think about what you have received. I know of no state-sponsored lottery that contacts winners to inform them they have won. The winners must come forward and claim their winnings or, after a set period of time, the winnings revert to the state. Thus, there is no incentive for the state to contact you. Secondly, there is no way for the state to know who bought a particular lottery ticket as identification is not requested nor required at the time of purchase. This is strictly a scam, trying to get some of your money by playing to your greed.

I HAVE RECEIVED EMAIL MESSAGE FROM YAHOO AND WINDOWS LIVE MEGA MILLIONS LOTTERY AWARD 2013 BY MRS PAULINE KERRY THAT MY EMAIL ADDRESS HAS WON 5000.000.00 GBP AND TO CONTACT WITH MR.EXCELLENT HOLMES TEL +447012926722 FOR CLAIM.
PL INFORM ME THAT THIS MESSAGE IS TRUE OR NOT. THANKS ,SINCERELY M.ILYAS

Dear Mr MOHAMMEDARIF,
Hello.good day!
from Yahoo corporation in Holland have informed me that i have won 250,000,00 Euro in a lottery.they gave me your contact information.they told me that you can guide me in the procedures.pls kindly cooperate me .BTW,pls give me your MSN to talk more with you.
awaiting your prompt rely.
thanks&best regards.
my id is: parviz_s2613

ITS A SCAM BY A GROUP OF MOTHER ******* BEAWARE OF THIS EMAIL FRAUD
Lottery scam is a type of advance-fee fraud which begins with an
unexpected email notification that "You have won!" a large sum of
money in a lottery. The recipient of the message - the target of the
scam - is usually told to keep the notice secret, "due to a mix-up in
some of the names and numbers," and to contact a "claims agent." After
contacting the agent, the target of the scam will be asked to pay
"processing fees" or "transfer charges" so that the winnings can be
distributed, but will never receive any lottery payment.[1] Many email
lottery scams use the names of legitimate lottery organizations or
other legitimate corporations/companies, but this does not mean the
legitimate organizations are in any way involved with the scams.

There are several ways to recognize a fake lottery email:

Unless someone has bought a ticket, they cannot have won a prize.
There are no such things as "email" draws or any other lottery where
"no tickets were sold". This is simply another invention by the
scammer to make the victim believe that they have won.
The scammer will ask the victim to pay a fee before they can receive
their prize. It is illegal for a real lottery to charge any sort of
fee. It does not matter what they say this fee is for (courier
charges, bank charges, various imaginary certificates - these are all
made up by the scammer to get money out of their victim). All real
lotteries subtract any fee and tax from the prize.
Scam lottery emails will nearly always come from free email accounts
such as Yahoo!, Hotmail, Live, MSN, Gmail etc.

This nis spam mail donot reply to it. Even i get those mails.They are fake and you can see that they will be asking all your personal details which is dangerous to be shared so please avoid such mails. Just delete them off

Hi:
This is a scam. Do not reply to it. If you reply, they will ask for your banking info to "deposit " your prize , or credit card info, and you will get your account cleaned out! Congrats for not responding to them immediately!

Beware! Its a scam. Do NOT give out any personal information. If you do, they (the senders) will probably ask you to deposit a small fee so they can send you the prize money. After receiving your cash they will move away!
Just send this email to your spam folder.
Just for your information, I also received one of these.
Thank you.