Fifteen Maryland McDonald’s employees remain in financial limbo Tuesday as a co-worker who claimed to hold a $105 million Mega Millions lottery ticket stays in hiding amid suspicions she is either being greedy or perpetrating a cruel hoax.
Three winning tickets were bought for Friday’s record-breaking $656 million Mega Millions drawing. While no one has come forward to claim the prize, Mirlande Wilson’s boasts to a newspaper that she selected the ticket has caused ill-will at a McDonald’s in Westport, a section in Baltimore, Md., where she works. Wilson bought tickets for a pool of co-workers, but told the New York Post that the winning ticket she claimed to have purchased was bought separately.
Lottery officials in Maryland, however, downplayed Wilson’s claim to the golden ticket without proof.
“Until or unless someone walks through the door with that ticket, and it’s verified as the winner, we don’t have any lead on anybody,” Maryland Lottery spokeswoman Carole Everett told FoxNews.com early Tuesday. “There is a winner somewhere, but we don’t know who they are yet.”
Attempts to reach Wilson, a Haitian immigrant living in Baltimore, have been unsuccessful. In a statement to The Associated Press, the franchise’s owner, Birul Desai, said the Post’s report was purely speculation and cautioned anyone from jumping to conclusions until the winning ticket is verified.
Wilson’s co-workers are sizzling with anger over the confusion.
“She can’t do this to us!” shift manager Suleiman Osman Husein told the New York Post. “We each paid $5. She took everybody’s money!”
Three tickets — one each in Kansas, Illinois and Maryland — will split the jackpot, which officials announced Monday had reached $656 million after sales from 44 state lotteries were collected, up from the previously reported $640 million. That means each winner would receive roughly $218 million apiece before taxes, or roughly $105 after Uncle Sam gets a cut.
“That record-shattering amount was the result of unprecedented sales in all jurisdictions where Mega Millions is played,” read a statement on MegaMillions.com.
Winners in Illinois and Maryland have several months to claim the prize, while the lucky ticket-holder in Kansas has up to one year. Both Maryland and Kansas allow winners to remain anonymous, while the winner in Illinois must be identified.
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4 Responses
A contract of that nature does not need to be in writing. It will end up being decided by a jury.
There’s an old yeshivish story about two fellows who split lottery tickets. They buy two tickets, and photocopy them, so that each one holds one ticket, and a photocopy of the other.
One day, reuven comes running into shul to shimon, “we won, we won–you’re ticket won. And we’re going to split it; we’re going to be rich.”
Shimon says, “I did? I won? I won! I won!”
Reuven says, “and we split it”
Shimon says “weeeeeeeellll”
reuven: What do you mean “well”? We bought together; we each agreed to split; we each photocopied the other’s ticket; we’ve been doing this for years.”
Shimon: we were just joking, we were not serious…
reuven: What do you mean not serious, of course we were serious. We photocopy them to show we are serious.
shimon: Nah, we were just kidding around, we didn’t really mean that if we win we’d split it…
Reuven: Good, because really MY ticket won.
And the story goes that the beis din sided with reuven.
Greedy greedy….
Poppas story is written in Rav Zilbersteins sefer on Chumash!