TRENTON, N.J. — Twenty-five years ago, Evelyn Adams had the unimaginable luck of winning the lottery twice in two years.

But opportunity morphed into misfortune for Adams, who ended up broke and living in a trailer after giving away and gambling away $5.4 million.

"Everybody wanted my money," the Ocean County woman told the website Bankrate.com in 2004. "Everybody had their hand out. I never learned one simple word in the English language — 'no.'"

Monday, a state Assembly panel sought to close the barn door.

The Assembly Regulatory Oversight and Gaming Committee approved a bill (A2982) by a vote of 5-0 that would give lottery winners like Adams the option of remaining anonymous for a year after winning the jackpot. A companion bill has not been introduced in the Senate.

Under current law, winners' identities are public information, and the state Lottery Commission can publicize their names, hometowns, prize winnings and photographs.

A spokeswoman for the lottery did not respond to questions about the bill or describe the commission's policy on releasing information about the winners, although its website sometimes omits their names and photographs.

Still, Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester), who sponsored the measure, said the information is all available through the Open Public Records Act. And he noted the game has changed from the small jackpots the state lottery awarded when it began in the early 1970s.

"If you look at our history when our lottery ... you didn't have these mega ball things, these multiple state lottery $300 million pots," Burzichelli said. "After some reading, there's a story here and there that surfaces about how this newfound wealth becomes a game changer for people."

He said he thought his proposal would also apply to such multistate lotteries as Powerball and Mega Millions, though he conceded he wasn't certain.

The lawmaker said he was led to introduce the bill from stories of misfortune among winners across the country:

• Jeffrey Dampier, a $20 million winner in Illinois, was kidnapped and killed by his sister-in-law and her boyfriend when they tried to get his money.
• William Post III of Pennsylvania, who won more than $16 million in 1988, was sued for a third of his winnings by a former landlord, found out his brother hired a contract killer to murder him and his wife, and fired a gun at a man who showed up at his home to collect a debt.
• Abraham Shakespeare of Florida, who won a $31 million jackpot in 2006, was found dead four years later. His girlfriend, Dee Dee Moore, was charged with the killing.
• Jack Whittaker of West Virginia, who won a $315 million Mega Millions jackpot 10 years ago, claims to have given away $50 million and then ran into several personal problems and family deaths. "I think if you have something, there's always someone else that wants it," he said on the ABC program "20/20." "I wish I'd torn that ticket up."

But Burzichelli's bill has at least five critics.

In March, a jury in Elizabeth awarded five laborers in Elizabeth $20 million after ruling that their coworker, Americo Lopes, cheated them out a jackpot they had won together.

The lawyer for the five, Eric Kahn, said Lopes kept his jackpot a secret from his co-workers, who learned of their bounty after Lopes told a supervisor and confirmed it on the Mega Millions website.

"If they had a provision for him to remain anonymous, my clients would not have known," Kahn said. "It would have been speculation. When there's a pool involved and there's a dispute and they're allowed to remain anonymous, it could cause a major problem. It would be much harder to prove what has been proven."

Burzichelli said other laws protect co-workers from being duped, but "he's correct in the fact that it may have taken them a little bit longer."