Winners' identities cloaked by legal entity
By Todd Northrop
It took some time, but the winners of an $83 million Mega Millions lottery jackpot have stepped up and claimed their prize — using a legal framework to avoid revealing their identities.
In November, the Mega Millions lottery announced that a winning ticket had been bought from Georgia. To be exact, the ticket was purchased from the White Water Chevron at 334 Cobb Parkway in Marietta.
Two months later, the winners have come forward and claimed their prize.
But who are they?
The state lottery agency Thursday said "members of ADirectConnection LLC" had won the the Nov. 18 Mega Millions drawing.
"If individuals decide to play in a group, prizes may be claimed by a single legal entity, such as a corporation, partnership or trust. Often times, winners consult with attorneys, accountants and financial advisors to decide what option is best for them," said Tandi Reddick, spokeswoman for the Georgia lottery.
It's not uncommon for winners to wait to claim their prize.
A 64-year-old woman from Dallas claimed her $7.5 million lottery prize in October three months after she knew she was a winner because she wanted time to plan.
For the $83 million prize, the agency had put the word out a few days after the drawing that no one had claimed the prize.
The business was formed 10 days after the drawing, according to state records. It is registered to a Sugarloaf Parkway address in Duluth that matches a psychiatrist's office.
The winners chose to receive the lump-sum cash option, which netted $50,826,699 before taxes. The cash option gives the winners the entire cash amount of the jackpot up-front, rather than accruing interest and doling out payments over 29 years that would deliver millions of dollars more, albeit over a long stretch of time.
The winning numbers were 31, 32, 49, 55, and 58, with Mega Ball number 15. The store that sold the lucky ticket was White Water Chevron at 334 Cobb Parkway S. in Marietta.
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Maybe Legal Minds can Help Other People in Other States Claim Their Jackpots Anonymously.
Seems they went threw some searching to find out who it was by letting everyone know where it is .lol
I always wondered why the lotteries don't suggest that winners verify they have the winning ticket. This would prevent a search for the winner that usually happens when a few weeks go by without the jackpot being claimed and give the winner the time necessary to do their thing before validating the ticket.
Each state lottery has their own rules which can't be changed by the rules in other states.
I would agree on theory. Technically since its a MULTI STATE game its actually feasible for the Mega Million to change rules and make it that the participating states agree to anonymity or full disclosure. I tend to find transparency to be key amongst adults and systems.
After Georgia lottery winner Craigory Burch, Jr. was murdered in 2016 for his winnings of $434,000, you would think that the media would have stepped back a little. It wasn't necessary to identify the Duluth address of the LLC.
Players in the South can always buy tickets in South Carolina if they would like to remain anonymous. You can play up to 20 consecutive draws.
I think that if a state has a law that says lottery winners can not remain anonymous to claim prizes they should not be able to make LLCs to claim the prize and skirt the law.
Smart move.
How does the process of verifying and remaining anonymous work? Do you walk into lottery headquarters, ask to verify the ticket, refuse your name, take back the ticket and leave?
In California as soon as there is a major win, lottery officials seize surveillance footage from the store where the ticket was purchased. In 2012, California lottery released the photo of a couple that they thought had won a $52 million jackpot a month earlier, because Bladimir and Marita Agnite of Fremont had kept trying to self-verify the ticket at several stores and couldn't figure out that it was a winner and that they had to go to a lottery office. California also released video of a guy purchasing a $1 million ticket with only a day left to claim his prize. They found him but unfortunately he had lost his ticket.
I didn't know that the jackpot was revised upward.
congrats to the winner that is nice retirement sent from heaven
Hire a lawyer and have them call the lottery to verify their client has the winning ticket and the ticket will be validated when the winner has their affairs in order. You're over-thinking verifying a jackpot winning ticket when it's just simply helping a jackpot winner.
Currently the jackpot prize is distributed by the state selling the winning ticket so even though it's multi-state, the state lottery rules apply.
"its actually feasible for the Mega Million to change rules"
Of course it is. They came up with an initial set of rules and they've been changed several times, but those rules are mostly about the nature of the game itself and leave other things to the individual states. There's little reason that any state should care about how another state administers things, but they certainly wouldn't want other states to control how they do things. I think that makes the chances of a rule change about anonymity awfully close to zero.
"How does the process of verifying and remaining anonymous work?"
You've seen the self-service scanners that tell you if your ticket is a winner? There's absolutely no technical reason that they can't report a ticket as a winner whether it won the last prize or the jackpot. That wouldn't prove to the state that you know you've got the winner and will be filing a claim in the future, but it would let the state know that the ticket isn't already lost or laying unchecked in a junk drawer. As stack says, you could also call them and just give them some of the other info from the ticket to confirm that it matches. If I won I wouldn't want the lottery to release any video surveillance because they thought the winner might not know they've got the ticket. If I win the lottery will definitely be hearing from a lawyer for multiple reasons long before they actually see the ticket.
They'll never step back because they don't care. Considering paparazzi were still chasing celebs after Princess Di's death, kidnappings, home invasions and murders of publicized lottery winners make for a good story so there's no incentive for them to care about a winner's safety.
Sugarloaf Pkwy is a busy road. I used to pass by that building every single day. It's asking for trouble. They should have used a PO Box. I've often thought of playing in SC, but a SC poster once told me that I'd have to establish 6 months of residency to claim anonymously. Claiming via a trust or corporation (with a PO Box address) seems less of a hassle.
Hey, Todd:
Is there any way to find out who they used as their financial advisor/lawyer? As a GA resident, my inquiring mind needs to know.
Two ways I can think of:
That is not true about South Carolina. When people say such things, ask them to name just one lottery winner that South Carolina would not let remain anonymous.
Trusts/LLCs are very complicated and not as anonymous as people would like to think. Also laws vary from state to state, so study up on them before even buying a ticket if that is the way you want to go. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates used an LLC to buy a New York City townhouse last year. The real estate press did a search and found out he was the owner of the LLC and published the address of the the townhouse with photos. Coates thought the LLC was anonymous so he put the townhouse back on the market a month after he bought it.
I think you misread what I wrote. She never claimed that SC didn't allow any of its winners to remain anonymous, she simply said that remaining anonymous if the winner is out of state meant first establishing a residency.
Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. Or maybe laws changed since then. At the time I told her that it was a small price to pay to remain anonymous. Now I don't care that much. I'd very much like to remain anonymous, but if I can't, or someone digs up my identity, I don't much care. I know what to expect and I know how to keep a low profile and know not to do stupid things that might endanger my safety. At some point I have no control but I know how to handle the things I can control.
As for LLCs, Coates should have done her homework. Celebs try to buy properties using straight LLCs all the time and TMZ not only exposes the property but the name of the LLC so that novices can track down other big ticket purchases. You need layers, and that's where lawyers come in. I have enough LLCs to know I'll need the help of experts to get some that take more than a google search for my identity to be found out.
I agree this was poorly executed in her case.
All these people who use them for tax efficiency seem to get it right. Go to a larger organisation. While this source deals with tax evasion the business constructs at the base are valid llcs and corporation:
"We also add a look in more detail at who the big intermediaries are and had surprising results too. Among the top 20 largest middlemen (by number of request for offshore entities’ creation), we found internationally known banks and all the ‘Big 4’ accounting companies but also a lot of other firms unknown to the wider public.
Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse take the first two places in the Top 20 ranking of international intermediaries, creating together as many offshore entities as the next three in line. We also found several banks from Luxembourg but also the three major French banks: Société Générale, Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas."
Pick any one to set up a discrete vehicle for anonymity.
[source]
After what happened with the leaked Panama Papers, it's no longer as discrete as it used to be.
Well, it'll still take hundreds of journalists to sift through, and really only high-profile people will get attention, politicians, athletes, CEOs, I don't recall any leaks about some random Billy Jones with an LLC somewhere in the Carribean.
Also, this info didn't come out with just FOIA requests or journalist effort, an internal informant had to leak it. At that point someone in the bank's backroom could just tip the press off to what a fat check you just cashed that somehow exactly mirrors the PB/MM jackpot that was just won.
Congratulations to the winners......