Federal law enforcement authorities are intercepting and destroying millions of foreign lottery mailings which are delivered by the truckload into the U.S.  Consumers, lured by prospects of instant wealth, are responding to the solicitations that do get through, to the tune of at least $120 million a year, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. 

Many of the packages sold are charged to a VISA, M/C or American Express. As they can not get a valid merchant account, through which they can process these credit card transactions, they pay other companies to launder their credit card sales drafts for a 15-20% fee in a process called "factoring".

This use of other businesses' merchant accounts to process their credit card transactions is not authorized by the credit card companies. Woofter Investment Corp, a Las Vegas firm run by Patsy M. Barbour, also known as Patsy Barbour-Woofter, that processed credit card sales drafts for over fifty Canadian foreign lottery telemarketers has agreed to pay $1,000,000 in redress.