When John Dreher learned he had won $1 million late last week, the Pennsylvania native threw his arms in the air, walked up to a brightly lit stage and shook hands with the tech billionaire behind the gift: Elon Musk.

Dazzled by Musk, Dreher said he “forgot about the money for a while,” according to a video posted on X by Musk’s America PAC on Saturday.

In addition to Dreher, three others have received $1 million payments as part of a daily lottery for registered swing-state voters that will be held through Election Day, according to the America PAC website.

But the payments could very well be illegal, election law experts told ABC News.

They said the giveaway appears to violate federal law that prohibits individuals from paying money in exchange for voter registration. But, they added, the payment system occupies a fuzzy legal area that is open to interpretation.

“I’ve gone back and forth about it,” Richard Briffault, a professor of law at Columbia University Law School, told ABC News. “It clearly violates the spirit of the statute, but it is not 100% clear to me that it violates the letter of the law.”

ABC News reached out to Tesla and Musk-owned Space X in an attempt to reach Musk for comment. He did not respond immediately. America PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department has sent a letter to America PAC warning Musk that his sweepstakes may violate federal law, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News on Wednesday. It is unclear whether the department has yet determined that Musk’s giveaway is illegal.

The Justice Department declined to comment to ABC News.

To enter the lottery for the $1 million prize, individuals must sign a petition distributed by America PAC pledging support for the First and Second Amendments. The only people eligible to sign are registered voters in seven major battleground states, the America PAC website says.

The federal law targets anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payments for registration to vote or to vote.” The penalty is a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for up to five years.

Musk’s initiative appears to violate the law because its exclusive eligibility for registered swing state voters and Musk’s enthusiastic support for Trump suggest that boosting voter registration is the giveaway’s primary goal, experts said.

“His intent is clearly to give people monetary incentives to get them registered to vote,” James Gardner, an election law professor at the University at Buffalo, told ABC News.

Doug Spencer, an election law professor at the University of Colorado, agrees. “It seems like it’s really crossing the line,” he said.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, called the giveaway “clearly illegal” in a blog post on Saturday.

Election law allows campaigns to support voters in certain ways, such as organizing a carpool to a voting location on election day. Musk’s giveaway, however, appears to fall into a separate category of illegal voter registration inducement, some experts say.

“This is not the same as going to the polls,” Briffault said.

However, some experts said there are plausible arguments for protecting the giveaway from legal jeopardy. For example, it does not focus exclusively on newly registered voters; it is also open to long-time voters. Moreover, experts add, federal law provides leeway for political speeches and donations.

“This is structured in such a way that it creates ambiguity,” says Spencer.

Musk could be prosecuted for the alleged crime, but that won’t happen before Election Day, experts say. Prosecution could act as a deterrent for potential future offenders – although a prison sentence would be highly unlikely and the fine for a billionaire could be considered negligible, Spencer added.

“The fine will not exceed $10,000,” Spencer said. “In practice it may not mean much.”

Alexander Malin of ABC News contributed to this report.