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If you won the lottery, what would you do?


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  • 1 month later...

$1.5 billion Mega Millions winner explains how "Lottery Lawyer" Jason Kurland stole $83 million

 

The famous — and still anonymous — winner of the record $1.4 billion Mega Millions lottery jackpot from South Carolina emerged from her legendary silence to deliver a testimony against New York "Lottery Lawyer" Jason "Jay" Kurland that explains how he stole $83 million from her in his schemes.

 

On July 26, the United States Department of Justice announced that a jury found Kurland, 48, guilty of defrauding his own lottery winner clients of more than $100 million. One of those familiar lottery winners, who lost $83 million to the conman, stepped back into the limelight to explain how he stole so much from her.

 

One morning, on Oct. 24, 2018, a woman in South Carolina woke up a billionaire. After scanning the numbers on her lottery ticket, she recalled feeling a mix of emotions — "astonishment, disbelief, joy, anxiety."

 

She got in her car and drove off for the now-famed KC Mart in Simpsonville to see if there would be any commotion. Maybe, if no one was there, surely she would be mistaken to think she had won, and she would drive back home to move on with her life.

 

But that was not the case.

 

"If no one was there, I would say, 'Okay, well, this was a disaster. We made a mistake,' and I'd drive home and all would be good," the winner said in her testimony. "But as we went by the convenience store, there was every media — there was helicopters, there was every piece of media, there was locals, you know, national. I so badly wanted to get out of there, I wanted to go under the seat. I became anxious."

 

More than four months after making her fateful lottery ticket purchase, the winner of the second-largest jackpot the world had ever seen stepped forward anonymously to claim a one-time payment of $877.78 million.

 

Kurland acted as the winner's spokesman and legal representation. At that point, he had already represented multiple lottery winners in the past, including a $254.2 million Connecticut Powerball winner, a $336.4 million Rhode Island Powerball winner, and a $121.6 million Delaware Powerball winner, but by far this would be his biggest client.

 

According to his firm's website at the time, he branded himself as a knowledgeable advisor who helped lottery winners navigate legalities and managing money. He has represented players from every corner of the nation, even appearing on national television during jackpot surges to offer advice to lottery players everywhere.

 

"The biggest mistake people make is doing it on their own," he said of winning a big prize in 2019. "All the horror stories you hear when people do it on their own."

 

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There's an absolutely fantastic novel, "The Winner", about lotteries who get "fixed" by a master of disguises...he chooses people on the losing end of life and requires that they let him make their investments so they don't end up doing stupid stuff.  I won't give any more of the story away, but I highly recommend it if you're into that sort of intrigue/mystery. 

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I’m so sick of the society around me, the countless chattering morons and their petty annoyances, that I think I’d try my hand at creating my own cult if I won the lottery.  My own society.  I’d funnel all of my cultists energies and resources into building stone megastructures that would surely outlive the people that mocked us.  Pyramids.  Monoliths.  Megaliths.  Temples too, of course, where we would pray exclusively for things with very low stakes.  We’d employ elaborate performances seeking to entice the consciousness of the universe to look in our direction.  One we felt we’d done enough to turn the eyes of fate in our direction, I’d climb onto the dais and ask for something reasonable.  This would happen monthly, as weekly has always felt entirely too greedy for me.  

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The stories people tell themselves to feel better …

 

There are about 10,000 people in the USA with a net worth over $100million. While very few ultra wealthy people won the lottery, many came across their money as much through luck as hard work.
 

Tech startups have created tens of thousands of millionaires and only a small fraction were brilliant founders. The rest were just mostly competent folks along for the ride. Being rich is not a roadmap to financial ruin.

 

People like to tell similar stories about very high bankruptcy rates for NFL and NBA players, whereas in reality the actual numbers are much lower.

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15 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

I'd also buy a fancy electric kettle. For my coffee. 😆


Happiness is simple pleasures …

 

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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