When Velvet Scott twisted off the cap of a bottle of Mountain Dew and found a message beneath it that said "Winner! $10,000 Cash," she was pretty excited. But when she contacted Pepsi, the manufacturer of Mountain Dew, to find out how to collect her prize, she was in for a disappointment. They said she hadn't won anything, because they weren't holding a contest. The bottle cap was a hoax. According to this article in the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (requires registration), this hoax goes on a lot. You can buy phony winning bottle caps to fool your friends, and there's even a
website devoted to debunking this prank. But Velvet Scott, even after learning all this, still isn't convinced. She's suing Pepsi to get her money since she insists that someone at the Pepsi distributor must have put the phony cap on the bottle. If she wins anything at all, expect many more people to start demanding money after winning non-existent contests.
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