Publishers Clearing House’s new plan: Future winners will be protected. Past winners still won’t get paid

CNN Lite ^ | September 30, 2025 | Jordan Valinsky, CNN

[Red Badger]

Publishers Clearing House – the bankrupt sweepstakes company that told its past prize winners they would no longer receive their ‘forever’ payments – has a new CEO, who has a plan to protect the company’s prize winners.

Future winners. Past winners are still out of luck.

ARB Interactive, a mobile gaming company that now owns PCH, announced Tuesday that Owen O’Donoghue will lead a “revitalization” of the 70-year-old brand that ensures “all future sweepstakes payouts are fully secure,” according to a statement. O’Donoghue, the new PCH CEO, also plans to make PCH a “mobile-first digital entertainment platform.”

The change comes after ARB Interactive said that under the terms of the sales agreement, it would not honor payouts for those who won their life-changing prizes before July 15th of this year, leaving many so-called forever winners without the sweepstakes checks they had come to rely on for years.

Tuesday’s announcement doesn’t include anything about past winners. But its CEO’s new plan is aimed at protecting future prize winnings should the company enter dire financial straits again.

The new “Price Protection Program” will be funded with “investment-grade assets held in FDIC-insured escrow accounts and managed through a bank-run investment vehicle, the program safeguards payments for large annuity prizes and reflects PCH’s commitment to trust and accountability,” the press release said.

O’Donoghue was most recently the chief revenue officer and cofounder of InfiniGods, a mobile game developer, and previously spent more than a decade at Meta (neé Facebook) in its gaming division.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; History; Society; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: payments; pch; scam; scammers; sweepstakes

[Nervous Tick]

Well, that certainly takes the sting out of being a perinneal PCH loser! 🤣

[SaveFerris]

😜😛😝

[Wuli]

PCH started out with the grand prizes done by PCH buying an annuity for the prize winner. In that way the funds for that prize were no longer in PCH hands.

Then they changed and started managing the grand prize monies themselves, mingled with their own investments. Then they went bankrupt.

Now they are going back to the prior method, of buying (securing) the prizes with funds invested outside of PCH.

Too late for many prior prize winners.

I think they might have killed their brand.

[A Navy Vet]

I always new it was a scam. Buy some books or periodicals and get on the list of millions for the big rewards. Has there been ANY winners that are still public?

[j.havenfarm]

Do the past “winners” still get to keep the giant novelty check they were presented with, per the commercials?

[Red Badger]

I’ve never met one......................

[chopperk]

Had a call 10 days ago from Andy Goldberg in New York confirming I won $5.5 million plus a new Mercedes Benz car. He said I had to send Pch $1050.00 immediately before they could deliver my check and car within 5 days. I of course refused and never heard from PCH since.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

I only cheated on my past husbands, tecent past husband....you, I will be faithful to FOREVER! I love you like no one before, neither of them!

[Larry Lucido]

Jerry: I’d like once for a sweepstakes company to have some guts, come out with the truth, just tell people the truth one time. Send out envelopes, “You have definitely lost!” You turn it over, giant printing, “Not even close!” You open it up, there’s this whole letter of explanation, “Even we cannot believe how badly you’ve done in this contest.”

[PJ-Comix]

Now we know why few state lottery winners refuse to opt for annuity payments nowadays.

[lowbridge]

My mother got a similar call from someone claiming to be from PCH. Informing her that she was the grand prize winner of millions of dollars and a new car. And the PCH team was already on their way to her house to award her her prizes. She just needed to pay them $3000 dollars.

My mother is easily fooled and she thought this was genuine. So, with the crook still on the phone, she raced through the house to retrieve her credit cards. My brother and I stopped her and we tried telling her this is a scam. At first she wouldnt believe us (”what if it isnt?”). It actually took a couple of minutes for us to talk mother down and not give her credit card details to whomever was on the phone and hang up the phone.