Abstract The aim of this paper is to study the Poisson random variables in relation to the Lah-Bell polynomials and the degenerate binomial and degenerate Poisson random variables in connection with the degenerate Lah-Bell polynomials. Among other things, we show that the rising factorial moments of the degenerate Poisson random variable with parameter α \alpha are given by the degenerate Lah-Bell polynomials evaluated at α \alpha . We also show that the probability-generating function of the degenerate Poisson random variable is equal to the generating function of the degenerate Lah-Bell polynomials. Also, we show similar results for the Poisson random variables. Here the n n th Lah-Bell number counts the number of ways a set of n n elements can be partitioned into non-empty linearly ordered subsets, the Lah-Bell polynomials are natural extensions of the Lah-Bell numbers and the degenerate Lah-Bell polynomials are degenerate versions of the Lah-Bell polynomials.