Construction Worker Keeps $245.6 Million Lottery Win a Secret for Weeks
Winning the lottery may seem like a wished-for windfall. Truth be told, though, most people who manage to correctly line up those magic numbers say it ruined their lives.
Time magazine reported that the National Endowment for Financial Education said roughly 70 percent of people who receive an unexpected infusion of cash lose it in a few short years. Don McNay, who counsels lottery winners, said that he’d seen it happen more than once.
“So many of them wind up unhappy or wind up broke,” he said. “People have had terrible things happen.”
Of course, not every lottery story ends sadly. And the latest New York lottery winner hopefully has a happy ending in store.
Nandlall Mangal won the $245.6 million by playing the lottery on Aug. 11.
Looking at that date, you may notice something: August 11 was a long time ago. Why are we only hearing about the 42-year-old construction workers winnings now?
Well, because the $6 ticket he bought sat on his kitchen table for a good time after the numbers were announced. In fact, Mangal doesn’t sound like a regular lotto player at all.
“I was grocery shopping and knew the Powerball jackpot was big,” he told WABC. “I decided that was a good time to buy my tickets.
“The ticket sat on my kitchen table for a week because I was out of town,” he said. “I checked the website when I got back and was surprised that I won the jackpot.”
Most people would’ve burned up the phone lines calling friends and family to tell them the good news, but not Mangal.
According to the Staten Island Advance, the first thing he did was call a lawyer. Then he went to work as days rolled into weeks, not breathing a word of the entire thing to anyone.
He also made a wise decision to not hold the monies in his personal name. With the lawyer’s help, he established a trust.
The Sea & Sand Trust will receive the funds instead of Mangal personally. What’s more, he decided to receive his winnings in a single lump sum.
That $245.6 million amount, which is normally doled out over a period of time, got pared down to a slightly more modest $99 million. But it’s still an amazing amount for a man who’d been a blue-collar worker mere weeks before.
Mangal finally came forward on Sept. 27 to claim his winnings. He says he’s planning to take some time off work in the future.
“Right now I just plan to relax and see where it goes from here,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii.”
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