Can you retrace us to the day you bought the ticket? What were u doing the day u saw you won? Did you run out of the store? What did u do after?
I buy $20 worth of picks whenever the jackpot exceeds $100 million. I always play the same numbers.
That particular day was just a day like any other: I left work, bought my ticket, and went home. It was a few days before the drawing and the drawings happen later in the evening so I check my numbers in the morning.
When I saw that I had won, I signed the back of the ticket and put it back in my wallet and went to work.
When you claim a jackpot you have to do paperwork. You take the lump sum and the lottery commission automatically takes 24% to cover taxes. You can elect to have more withheld, and, because I’m a data analyst and I have a spreadsheet for everything, I knew exactly how much to have them withhold. That was the last time I paid taxes and it totaled more than an average American pays in their entire life. So, I don’t feel too bad about not paying taxes out of pocket anymore.
The winnings come in two different deposits (those big checks aren’t real, it’s a wire transfer). The first deposit is the amount of the jackpot that my state owed me and came about 14 days after the paperwork was done. That day, I went to work, as usual, and when I got the notification on my phone of the deposit, I cleared my browser history on my work computer, left my work ID on my desk, and sent a delayed delivery email to my manager resigning. I walked out of the building and drove to a hotel a few hours away and stayed there for two weeks until the other deposit dropped. I called my lawyer and had her manage moving out of my apartment and putting all of that stuff in storage.
This way of quitting and disappearing is movie-style slick.
I had been slowly clearing out my desk between when I claimed and that day. Two days before I got the first deposit, I had my desk fully cleared out, all of my pictures off my desk, coffee cup out of the break room and all of my stuff out of the office. I had stopped carrying my bag and literally had nothing personal to take out of the office with me.
It’s likely they didn’t even notice I was gone until my email sent.
Did you dump the apartment because your name became public information when the money dropped?
No. My name didn’t become public. I use a trust, behind an LLC, behind an anonymous LLC to claim the winnings.
I dropped the apartment because I was wanted to move.
How did you, as a regular person, set up two LLCs to anonymize the money?
LegalZoom.
My first step was setting up an anonymous LLC in New Mexico. Then I set up an LLC in Ohio using the anonymous LLC in NM as the agent. I used the Ohio LLC to set up a trust with the LLC as the trustee and set up an anonymous LLC in Wyoming as the beneficiary.
These moves allowed me to effectively claim anonymously and the money could never be tracked all the way back to me without a lot of legal wrangling. It’s not litigation proof, but there are enough barriers to delay exposure for long enough to regroup and go deeper.
I’ve since set up more anonymous LLCs and trusts to move my money around. At this point I manage the entire system myself and only have to bring in an accountant once a year to look over the books for any tax liability. I also have a lawyer on retainer in case I need her.
What has been your most extravagant purchase?
I spent $3 million on my farm. 278 acres of rolling hills; about 35% pasture and 65% forested. Plenty of elevation, four significant streams, a developed spring and plenty of wild game.
Any hobbies for which you went completely crazy without $$ limits?
Well, my only persistent hobby over the years has been playing Civilization and watching Star Trek. I still do both of those things. I also play guitar but I bought a nice Taylor at first and that’s the last guitar I bought.
When I bought my farm, I built a pottery studio on one of the hills overlooking the property. It’s not for me though; the woman I dated in college majored in ceramics but she’s been out of my life for a long time. If she ever shows up in my life again, she’s welcome to it.
I have been known to fly to London on occasion to get a four pack of Korean hookers, but it’s not a regular thing.
Why Korean?
Because they are nice, fun, and playful. I’ve tried others. Eastern European hookers are fairly sloppy, not very polite, and seem very entitled. I had a weekend with a couple of Portuguese hookers once but they are rowdy. No shit; they will not stop fucking you until you pass out or the weekend is over.
How has your family, friends and love life been?
I told my family, who proceeded to take me to court to place me in a conservatorship to gain control of my assets. After the judge laughed them out of court, they started spreading rumors and gossip around my hometown about me to ruin my reputation. I haven’t been home since.
Most of my pre-lotto friends don’t speak to me anymore. They started asking me for money and when I told them “no” they would lash out saying things like “It’s not really your money” & “you shouldn’t get to decide what to do with it because you didn’t earn it”. They became bitter, resentful, and spiteful. Some of them asked me to help them “start a business” or “invest in this startup”. I’d ask them for a business plan or for more information and they’d bail.
Your family took you to court?
My parents filed the suit with affidavits from my three siblings as support. They wanted control of my money because, well, it’s mid-eight-figures USD and they are entitled, greedy, white-trash.
If your family had just been played it cool instead of the legal stuff and badmouthing you, is it safe to say they would of been well taken care of?
I would have been fair and generous. I mean, I did the fair and generous thing by telling them. I never had the best relationship with any of them, and really considered myself fortunate for getting out of my childhood alive. They are all toxic in one form or another; narcissists, assholes, Trump Republicans all. But I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Turns out, I was wrong.
So, realizing I had the resources to just up and say “Fuck off”, that’s what I did.
Is there anything you couldn’t do previously that you can do now that makes you happy?
Happy? Not really. I was pretty solid on the happiness front before.
I can say with relative certainty that I’m considerably more stress-free. I’ll be the first to admit that going to a job every day was a pain in the ass. I didn’t mind it, but I was only working so that I could retire and stop working.
I decided that I wanted more control over how I was living, and so, I bought the farm. I raise chickens, pigs, and rabbits for meat and I supplement that with hunting deer & turkey. I have a three acre pond stocked with catfish and lake trout.
I also take annual trips to Delaware to fish for lobster and to Louisiana to shrimp. I have Apple, pear, plum, pawpaw and persimmon orchards as well as blackberry, blueberry and elderberry groves. I grow my own barley and hops for beer and my own grapes for wine and I have gardens and grain fields to feed myself and my livestock.
I bought a 1971 Hemi Cuda convertible. I also have a beach house in addition to the farm and my house in town.
What’s your daily routine look like? And what do weekends look like now that money is essentially no object for you?
On the daily I wake up, have a coffee, feed the animals, take care of my money, do the rest of my farm chores, and chill.
On a good day on the farm, I can usually get all of my chores done by 3:00 pm and can then sit on the porch or on the patio, smoking weed and drinking some home brew.
If I’m at my house in the suburbs, I’ll wait for one of my neighbors and her daughter/sister to come over for some weed and sexy fun time.
Every day is a weekend. I don’t really pay attention to what day it is unless there’s something on TV I want to watch.
Whats your favorite part of your daily routine?
Settling into the bar in my basement with a beer and a smoke at the end of the day.
Any unexpected things you learned from being wealthier now?
-
More money doesn’t make you any happier. I was happy before I won (and pretty good with money anyway.) I already had a retirement portfolio of $1.3 million and was on track to retire in my 50s. The only thing I can say is that my life is just simpler. I don’t owe anything to anyone: my time, my money, my attention, my feelings are all my own and I don’t have to do anything unless I want to.
-
More money, more problems. The hustle never stops. I’ve increased my net worth 20% over my payout amount. It takes about 3-4 hours each day to look at my accounts and my investments and figure out what I’m going to do next. I’m constantly on the phone with lawyers, accountants and the agents for my LLCs dealing with administrative bullshit. Granted, I could sit back and just let it all shake out, but the horror stories you see on the news about those lottery winners who lose it all are true (if rare).
-
Money talks, wealth whispers. It doesn’t take long at all for people to figure you out if you draw attention to yourself. I don’t show off. While it’s true that I have a beach house in Destin, I don’t ever take anyone with me when I go. I own a 1971 Hemi Cuda convertible, but I don’t drive it everyday.
Is there anything you would have done differently?
- Invest differently. I initially put a lot of my money in real estate, but the margin was too low and I lost a lot of wealth opportunity when I could have been investing in the market. I’ve since reallocated my portfolio to put about 95% of my money in the market (Short term corporate bonds, municipal bonds, large cap dividends, and emerging markets).
How true is it that most lottery winner go broke?
It’s not true at all.
The small minority of large jackpot winners who find themselves on the news because the lost it all are outliers.
If it were a widespread problem you’d hear about it more often, and with the increase in large jackpots, you’d hear about it more recently.
What advice would you give to someone who just won the lottery?
If you ever win a big jackpot, get a lawyer and tell him/her that you want to claim as anonymously as possible and then that you want to hide.
Don’t ever agree to pay the lawyer with a percentage of the winnings. If he/she is legit, they will agree to a set fee contingent upon claiming the jackpot; it should not exceed $100,000.
Then just show them what I did with the anonymous LLCs. It’s perfectly legal and will protect you. If they don’t believe you, find a different lawyer.
Do you think you could ever find true love?
I’ve found true love. I wasn’t emotionally intelligent enough to keep it.
Are you happy?
I’m just as happy as I was before the win.
