I am going to say outright the lottery may have erred in paying the claim and that the Ashkars are more likely not the legitimate owners of the ticket, against my preffered tone which is: the lottery erred in paying the claim, and that the Ashakrs are not the legitimate owners of the ticket.
The time delay in presenting the ticket for claim, while legal, suggested absence of confidence in ownership, and clear fear of lottery and public challenge to any mounted claim.
The Ashkars said:
" The reason for the delay, according to the lottery's news release: Ashkar was concerned that the winning ticket "could negatively influence his life if he did not plan properly before being publicly introduced." "
" Ashkar said he did not want the winning ticket to influence his engagement and then marriage, according to the news release."
The statement is weak and poor, and does not add up with the very aim and motive behind a lottery ticket purchaser, which is, to win the grand prize in the very game that they had purchased a ticket for. So, it is severely unlikely that the Ashkars did not know, understand, what they were doing, and its implications.
The article said:
"The younger brother also said that during that time, he decided to share his winnings with his brother, Nayel, to show his appreciation for all that Nayel had done for him during his life,"
The above claim of Ashkar's younger brother is not only untrue but extremnly weak, and is a carefully calculated ploy designed to influence the un-informed and the naive with a hypocritical claim of a bleeding heart of charity, to reward his older brother with $2.5m for what he has done for him in life, while the heavier and greater priority for his parents, the very people that channelled the beginnings of his existence on earth and supported his early weaknesses and helplessness, remain discarded and relegated aside, as they continue to slave away dangerously in a run-down store that was unlikely to have brought in $50,000 in net profits after all expense, at the end fo each year during the past 6 years, in a though neiborhood.
The names Nayel and Ashkar are Parsi, from Iran, and from all indications the family background of the store owners and the presumed winners are Iranian origins.
The vast majority of party stores in tough US neighborhoods in the east coast and midwest are owned, run and operated by immigrants from the middle east and South Asia.
A significant population of immigrants to the USA carry, and gladly extend the benefits of their earnings in the USA with family, and extended family, and communities of origins, wherever there are on the this planet.
Many lottery winners, regardless of national origins have often cited members of their families as the priority for the distribution of their newly found wealth. It is just highly un-likely that Nayel Ashkar would dump half his winnings into his older brother, just like that, even after 6 years of mental exercises, and planning on how to write the script and tale, of how he came into possession of a scrtach-off ticket worth $5.0m that Syracuse NYwill buy.
I beleive that New York Lottery players need more explanations from their lottery commision, board or authority about the lottery's payment of $5m 6years after the ticket was purchased, and based on such instruments as sworn affidavits, which are legal but are consistently used by lawyers to swaive the course of justice and to defeat the application and realization of justice, whereever there are needed.
The whole claim is a negation of the successes of the Iowa lottery with the attempted claim of a winning $14M or so Hot Lotto ticket, by a New York attorney across America in Des Moins.
If the Ashkars are not the legitimate owners of the ticket, then let Karma bring to bear upon them, far more appropriate penalties than the state could ever imagine or able to do, by law
If the Ashkars are the legitimate owners of the ticket, then let Karma allow them to enjoy the benefits of the ticket.
Whoever is the true owner of this tciket, let the payments made by the lottery come back to them, from who ever has the funds, now.