Is my father being scammed?

Hello. Semi-long story incoming, but the bottom line is that I'm not sure if my father (in his late 60s) is being scammed right now.

The story:

Every now and then, he'll play online lottery games. He receives emails from these companies, and sometimes he clicks on them to enter, because he figures "why not?". (I've told him to be careful what he clicks on with the internet.)

In the middle of December, he received a letter saying that he was a winner and needed to call the number provided. He did so and was put in touch with a guy named Dave. Dave tells my father that he's won a large sum of money. My father is cautious but optimistic. Dave asks him if he wants the media/news outlets involved, and my father says no. They send him the actual check -- it's a cashier's check, but they tell him NOT to cash it until he's received proper tax documents from them, or else he'll end up having to pay taxes on it.

Jumping ahead a bit, they play a bit of phone tag for a few weeks -- things slowed down around the holidays -- but now they're back in touch over the phone. Dave says they can do a direct deposit if my dad wishes to provide his account number / routing number, but my dad smartly says he doesn't want to give out that information. So Dave says it's fine, and the other option could take up to 30-60 days.

Now, Dave is talking about his company getting a "loan" to pay for the taxes so my dad doesn't have to, and setting up an "external bank account" in my dad's name, etc. I don't know all of the details, but it all just FEELS shady to me when my father talks about it on the phone.

I'm just so torn, because my father really needs the money, badly. So I know he WANTS it to be real. However, he IS being cautious, and he knows that the moment they ask him to pay something, it's a scam. And that's the thing that confuses me -- after a month of calls to hammer out details, they haven't asked him to pay any money, and he's being told he won't have to.

It feels like a scam to me, but I'm also a cynic. But if it were a scam, wouldn't they have asked him for money by now? I don't really know what to do, because he gets clearly agitated when I talk about the situation as if he's being scammed. He's not senile by any means, so that's not the issue. He just really, really needs the money. He's told me that he'll willingly admit it's a scam once it becomes obvious, but right now, it seems like it still might be real.

This "Dave" person says his company is called Global Lotto (or something like that), and that they "work with" Publisher's Clearing House and other companies like that. I got my father to give me Dave's number, and I did a google search, but I didn't immediately find anything about the number that screams "scam." Usually you can google a phone number, and you'll see spam reports pop up.

What do you folks think?

Thanks,
-Worried Son

A real lottery needs to be registered in your country and state.

You can only win a lottery if you buy a ticket at a retailer.

This makes no sense at all. It is scary that a bank name is being opened in your fathers name. Lotteries have always taken taxes out when you physically go pick up the money at your states lottery office.

Now, Dave is talking about his company getting a "loan" to pay for the taxes so my dad doesn't have to, and setting up an "external bank account" in my dad's name, etc. I don't know all of the details, but it all just FEELS shady to me when my father talks about it on the phone