You���ve Won the Biggest Single-Ticket Lottery Prize in U.S. History; For Goodness Sake, Stay Hidden
The recent winner of the biggest single-ticket lottery prize in U.S. history, Mavis Wanczyk, has some thinking to do���.lots of it���in the wake of her stunning good fortune.
Make no mistake, the ���problems��� that come with winning a $758.7 million Powerball jackpot are, indeed good problems to have, but they can surely be problems, nevertheless.
For starters, there are all the people - from family and friends, to perfect strangers - who will come out of the woodwork to ask her for a share of her dough. As a matter of fact, as soon as she emerged as the lottery winner, Wanczyk received a serious request from a random stranger to pay off his mortgage.
And there will be many more knocks on the door like that to come.
���She better get ready. She���s going to be hit up for investment opportunities, charity requests, even people she knows are going to come to her,��� said Jason Kurland, an attorney with Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman in New York, in a piece over at CNBC.com about Wanczyk.
���She has an insane amount of money now.���
Many have expressed curiosity that Wanczyk opted to both waste absolutely no time in coming forward, and do so very publicly. In Massachusetts, lottery winners have up to a year to claim their prizes. What���s more, even though Bay State law requires winners to be publicly revealed, they have the option of protecting their anonymity by creating a trust and letting the trustee come forward on their behalf.
By not doing that, however, Wanczyk has opened herself up to a direct and enormous barrage of requests for money by hand-out seekers all around the world.
However, even though she has quickly and completely revealed herself, Wanczyk can still retain an attorney to serve as a buffer between her and the rest of the world, and otherwise help to manage the numerous hassles that will surely result from her newfound notoriety.
���Her life will be much easier if she can hide behind someone else, so to speak, when she gets all these calls and questions,��� Kurland said.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
