Won $100,000 lottery from WA. Must fly from CA to get winnings. Legit?

Question

It was some organization's anniversary, so they were generous and called tens of thousands of people from WA and CA to be entered into the lottery. My mother won the 2nd prize of $100,000. (1st prize was some BMW)

They have their own lawyer/attorney to let us know that it is legit.

My mom tried to ask for the other winners' numbers to call them if it's legit, but they didn't give it to us because of privacy issues.

They faxed us a "certificate" that it's real. However, it's in Chinese, her name was misspelled (N--- instead of M---), phone number was written wrong (ex. area code 312 instead of 321)

Does the certificate in Chinese effect the legality of it?

With so many human errors, I would assume that these people aren't very careful and professional.

The attorney can be some person hired to make it sound legit.

Why call people from WA AND CA?

What if they do deposit the $, but scam us by taking out the $ including her own. I watched some tv show and that made it sound plausible haha. :P

How can we know it is an honest transaction?

Should we go for it?

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that would either be amazing, or send us back 1,000,000 steps.

Answer 1

Sounds fishy. Ask them for the local address and tell them you plan to contact a local TV station to make sure there's a crew there to film her getting the prize so she could show the family back home. If they're legit, they'd probably be thrilled for the free publicity. If they aren't, they'll probably duck and cover like mad.

Answer 2

Typical chinese scam, don't fall for it unless you're a moron...

Answer 3

Get in touch with the attorney general in your state,he or she can investigate as too wheather or not it's a scam. About a month ago the wife of the mayor of our city received a check for a lg.sum of money saying she won the lottery,while the check looked real in every way the mayor called the attorney general It was a scam. Be careful.