Did I apply for this grant?
If the answer is “no”, the grant is invariably a scam. While the government has a diverse share of handouts, the process of receiving money from the government is uniform across the board. You apply, most likely wait until a fair bit of vetting takes place, and then get approval from an official source.
Offers of free money from government grants? That’s a scam
Government grant scammers know that not everyone is familiar with the “did I apply” rule, and will often come out in full force after some form of disaster or incident occurred. It could be on a national scale, a city scale or even something that happened to you personally. Here, the scammers will pose as government officials and try to convince you they have a government check just for you they’d be happy to hand over if you’d just confirm a few details…