HOUSTON -- A Houston-area man found out he won thousands of dollars in an international lottery. All he had to do was pay the taxes. It's a lottery scam that the government is warning Americans about, Local 2 reported Wednesday.

It happened to Lance Hayes via e-mail.

"(It said) we are pleased to inform you that Euro City Madrid Spain had completed processing your payments for the sum of $715,00," Hayes said.

For a moment, Hayes, who has occasionally played foreign lotteries, experienced the thrill of victory.

"The feeling is overwhelming. You want to shout with jubilee," he said.

But something made Hayes wary. When he called overseas to claim his money, a so-called agent told him of a slight catch.

"To transfer the money to your bank, we need you to pay for what he called a Eurotax. He wanted $1,600," Hayes said.

That did not sound right to Hayes. He figured most lotteries take taxes before they send the winnings.

But that's not the way scam lotteries operate, according to United States Postal Inspector Michael Hartman.

"The bad guy has an organization and they claim to be a bank and they claim to be a government agency or a lottery department of some kind and they falsely tell Americans that they've won the lottery. But in order to protect the lottery prize, they have to pay a fee. They may call it pre-payment taxes. They may call it insurance. They may call it customs duties -- some kind of explanation that may make sense, but it's not true," Hartman said.

Hartman said it is against the law for foreign lotteries to operate in the United States.

"A foreign lottery mailing into the United States is illegal in itself," he said.

"If someone receives a piece of mail, a phone call and e-mail that says you've won an international lottery, what do you want them to do?" Local 2 Trouble Shooter Emily Akin said.

"They should be highly skeptical. And they should, in no circumstance, send any money to anyone in order to collect a prize. Basically, my best advice is shred it or throw it in the garbage," Hartman said.

The postal inspectors said it's hard to stop lottery fraud because so much of it originates overseas.

However, officials said if Americans would stop sending money, the scammers would stop sending solicitations.

Hayes understands how those solicitations may be hard to resist.

"I can't lie. I got excited. But then something said, '(You're not a winner). Not yet,'" he said.