Lottery winners broke, busted
For someone who struck it rich, William Rivenburgh had fairly modest plans about how to spend his lottery winnings three years ago:
Pay off debts, make home repairs and possibly take a family trip to Disney World. Whether any of those things happened is unclear.
What is clear is that the money Rivenburgh has gotten so far from the $1 million scratch-off ticket he won in 2006 seems to have evaporated. He doesn't have enough money to make $5,000 bail after he was arrested May 25 for alleged ...
Jun 25, 2009, 12:57 am - Lottery News forum
Lottery bonus to go to food bank
The $100,000 bonus that went to the Southeast Washington supermarket that sold last month's $144 million Powerball ticket will go to charity, the grocery chain said yesterday.
The Capital Area Food Bank will get the money that the Giant Food on Alabama Avenue received as part of the lottery winnings, officials from the store said.
It is traditional for the store that sells the winning ticket to get a bonus. This was the city's largest Powerball win, and as soon as the location of the sale ...
Jun 1, 2009, 9:12 am - Lottery News forum
Reflecting bad times, some lotteries hit losing streak
State lotteries are down on their luck as players cut back on games of chance.
From California, where sales for the past year are down 5%, to Florida, where sales slipped 7%, fewer people are gambling on scratch-off tickets and numbers games.
The economy probably has affected lottery sales the way it's affected all discretionary spending, says David Gale of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
About half of Americans buy lottery tickets, according to a 2008 ...
Apr 14, 2009, 8:47 am - Lottery News forum
Book Review: The Lottery Wars
Review by Joshua Spivak, as published in San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 2009
All you need is a dollar and a dream. This was the motto for New York Lottery's great ad campaign, and it truly captures the easy-money sales pitch that has turned the lottery into a nationwide success. And it's only growing. Dollars may be in short supply, thanks to the economic collapse, but the dream of instant riches endures.
This is actually an old tale. In The Lottery Wars, Matthew Sweeney takes an incis ...
Apr 7, 2009, 6:39 pm - Lottery News forum
Hitting the jackpot: Rebecca Hargrove's winning strategy
Tenn. Lottery CEO says tickets seem recession-proof, help fund college educations
You may not have heard of Rebecca Paul Hargrove, but in the lottery world, she's a celebrity.
The brash, hard-charging CEO of the Tennessee lottery has accomplished what nobody else has in the state-run gaming business. She ran the lottery in Illinois where sales topped $1.3 billion. Next, Hargrove moved to Florida, where she set a new record: $95 million in sales the first week.
In Florida, Hargrove's mar ...
Mar 29, 2009, 11:37 am - Lottery News forum
Nationwide, lottery jackpots keep getting bigger
Around the United States, lottery jackpots are continuing to grow larger, making the allure of picking up a couple extra lottery tickets ever-stronger.
Leading the pack is the California SuperLotto Plus jackpot, which rolled to $76 million last night when no ticket won Wednesday night's $70 million top prize.
The jackpots of both multi-state lotteries have rolled over again this week also, with grand prizes of $65 million for Powerball and $60 million for Mega Millions.
Because Mega Mil ...
Feb 5, 2009, 7:05 pm - Lottery News forum
Lottery win bad news for gas station employees
Store owner allegedly sold winning lottery ticket, fired staff to avoid sharing commission
Selling the winning lottery ticket turned out to be unlucky for four employees at the gas station that sold the $25.5 million ticket Jan. 3.
The employees, a former manager and three cashiers, allege that they were fired because the Wadsworth Mobil owner did not want to share the one percent commission he received for the winning ticket.
I'm kind of sorry we sold the winning ticket only because i ...
Jan 29, 2009, 11:00 am - Lottery News forum
Many states' lottery sales are rising in recession
Even in these tough economic times, many people are feeling lucky.
More than half of all states with lotteries have reported rising sales over the past six months, and some researchers say financial insecurity might be driving people to risk more of their money than usual on $1 and $5 instant scratch-offs and other daily games in hopes of a big payoff.
Someday somebody is going to win and I hope it is me, said Albert Atwood of Nashville, who spends $100 weekly playing the Pick 5 and Lotto ...
Jan 12, 2009, 8:49 am - Lottery News forum
Woman scammed out of $400,000 pursuing lottery-sized fortune
This may well be the mother of all Internet scam cases.
Janella Spears, a reverend and a registered nurse from Sweet Home, Oregon, ended up sending Nigerian fraudsters more than $400,000 when she was promised a multi-million dollar pay out from a lost relative.
When she began to doubt she was sent letters from the FBI Director, the US President and the President of Nigeria. She still thought it was genuine and ignored the pleas of her family and law enforcement officials in the US.
She ...
Dec 9, 2008, 1:23 am - Lottery News forum
Florida woman loses $40,000 in lottery ticket scam
A South Florida elderly woman was scammed out of thousands of dollars in an alleged lottery ticket scam, police said.
Pembroke Pines police said that on Oct. 24 Aydee Suarez-Ospina, 72, was approached by the a Hispanic man and woman at the Bravo Supermarket at 12141 Pembroke Road. Police said the man told Suarez-Ospina that he was in possession of a winning lottery ticket and needed assistance in claiming the prize because he was not a U.S. citizen.
The female suspect, pretending to overhe ...
Dec 5, 2008, 4:42 pm - Lottery News forum
