A former Atlanta cabbie says the nearly $2 million he was awarded from a disputed Big Game lottery pot is a bittersweet victory.
While Patrick Atakora is an instant millionaire on paper, he and five co-defendants who each were awarded $346,357 by Fulton County Superior Court still face the challenge of collecting the money.
On Tuesday, a jury found Atakora and five other West African cabdrivers in Atlanta were denied their fair share of the winnings, which were distributed to 23 other drivers. The other plaintiffs are Jean Baptiste Kouassi, Samuel K. Nyarko, James Donkor, James Opoku and Kouao Kablan.
Each of the 23 drivers who initially claimed a share of the winning lottery ticket drawn on May 4, 2001, received about $2.1 million before taxes. However, none of the $49.4 million in winnings was held in escrow during the legal dispute, which will likely make it difficult for Atakora and the others to track down what's left.
"To go through this because of . . . greed," Atakora said Wednesday during an interview at his home in Powder Springs.
"That's a big lesson," he said, shaking his head and staring into the distance. "Sometime people say when people get money they get greedy. Now I understand."
Atakora said he has hired a private investigator to uncover money he believes that some of his former friends hid to avoid paying the court-ordered settlement.
"She is working hard, but some of them have hidden their money in their churches," Atakora said. "We already freeze their accounts, but she don't know what the outcome is going to be."
If he gets the $1,989,492 he was granted by the court, he will use it to give his children a better education than he received, he said.
At the same time, he said, he will always be sad that the bonanza cost him friends with whom he had been "closer than family."
The 23 drivers who claimed the winnings had contended in court they were the only legitimate winners of the jackpot because only they had each contributed $5 to that day's pool of lottery tickets. The six drivers who went to court to demand a share said earlier winnings they contributed to were supposed to have been rolled over to buy fresh lottery tickets.
An Atlanta cabbie since 1991, Atakora said he still can't believe the other drivers with whom he spent "more time than I spent with my wife and children" would turn on him over money.
The 23 who refused to share the lottery proceeds violated a principle of African culture, Atakora said.
"In Africa, when people go and get a buffalo they make sure everybody got their cut and everybody dance in the village," he said. "That's where we use that against them. We said, 'We want a cut and we want to dance in the village, too.' "
If Atakora and the others are not able to get the 23 winners to pay the judgment, they could go back to court to seek liens against properties and wages.
Although he and the other claimants celebrated with champagne toasts, Atakora said that until he finds out how much of the award he will receive, he plans to keep his job as a long-distance truck driver.
Nobody has commented on this story yet.