Michigan legislator compares revealing identities to "throwing meat in a shark-infested ocean"

By Kate Northrop

Michigan legislators are discussing a bill that would allow winners of multi-state games like Powerball and Mega Millions to remain anonymous when claiming their prizes.

House bill 4048, sponsored by state Representative Pat Outman, is currently a hot topic, especially considering the looming $1.73 billion Powerball jackpot that has lottery players across the nation in a ticket-buying frenzy. If it is signed into law, many lottery winners in the state will have the option to claim prizes while hiding their identity.

"This bill is necessary for the safety, privacy and overall well-being of our citizens," Outman stated.

Currently, the state of Michigan allows for anonymous claims for certain games and prize amounts. Lottery players who win more than $10,000 in local, in-state games may claim their prizes without revealing their name, but winners of multi-state games like Mega Millions, Powerball, and Lucky for Life cannot remain anonymous.

Whether players should be allowed to hide their identity from the public has always been a debate. Some argue that having your name exposed to the world after winning hundreds of millions of dollars puts yourself and others around you in danger, while others say that lottery winners should accept the risk that comes with buying a ticket for the sake of preserving the game's integrity.

"For transparency sake, being able to show that real people are winning these life-changing prizes — we feel that's important," Michigan Lottery spokesperson Jake Harris said on Tuesday, adding that "it's a 15 minutes of fame thing."

However, since multi-state games can deliver prizes generally much larger than the those offered by local in-state games, some players would appreciate a layer of safety that House bill 4048 would provide.

"You run the risk of people coming after you for fraud or even like a kidnapping," Michigan resident Bryan Hooper told WILX in an interview. "If you can just kind of take your money and be able to help your family and friends and not have every crazy person in the world coming after you for it, it would be a lot better for the winners."

If anything, supporters of Bill 4048 even argue that it would encourage more people to play the lottery, despite taking away some of the advertising power that winners' identities provide.

"More people would probably play the lottery if they knew not everybody would know their business," Representative Tyrone Carter, who chairs the House Regulatory Reform Committee, said.

While other states allow full anonymity for multi-state game lottery winners, Harris added that Michigan players can choose to play in-state games if they are concerned about revealing their identity.

"If they would prefer to play games that allow them to have that anonymity, they can play games that are offered just within Michigan," Harris continued. "And there are still great prizes to be had on those games."

Harris argues that a lottery winner's fame may only last "15 minutes," but it should be noted that many scammers take advantage of large public lottery claims to conduct scams that target susceptible victims online, many of them elderly individuals. For example, scammers might pose as a notable Mega Millions or Powerball jackpot winner using a fake social media account to lie about giving away large sums of money, but they will ask for a processing fee in exchange for a handout that doesn't exist. Many of these con artists will use the identities of winners do so, even ones that have won many years ago, and many victims unfortunately do not have the wherewithal to discern scam from reality.

Bill 4048 passed unanimously out of a House committee Tuesday morning and will advance on to the full House for consideration. Should the bill pass, lottery winners will be able to choose whether they'd like to reveal their name during the prize claims process, but not in time for a potential winner from Michigan to hide their identity should they land the $1.725 billion Powerball jackpot.

A similar bill passed by a vote of 107-1 in the House in 2021, but it died since it never made it to the floor for discussion in the Senate.

"If they [other states] can do it, I'm sure we can do it," Hooper supposed. "People still play in those states, don't they?"