By John Dempsey, WLS-AM 890 News
(CHICAGO) Millions of Americans will be anxiously awaiting the results of tonight’s Powerball drawing, with the jackpot at a record 1.5 billion dollars. Chicago Securities Attorney Andrew Stoltmann told “The Jonathan Brandmeier Show” on WLS, that most lottery winners are utterly unprepared for their newfound fortune, and that 75 percent of them are bankrupt within five years of winning.
One thing he blames, is laws in Illinois and most other states that require lottery winners to go public. “The number one reason why they lost their fortunes is because the lottery officials forced them to have their names released. I know a lot of people say ‘well gee, boo-hoo, you win the lottery, not a problem.’ But it is a problem. Seventy five percent of the people who win the lottery are broke within five years, and when you force these people and their names to be public, you literally make these people some of the most heavily targeted people in the world. There are people out there that simply wait until the lottery winners names are released and they target them relentlessly. And it’s been going on for thirty or forty years, and it’s going to happen again.”
Stoltmann says much of the pressure comes from winner’s relatives, other pressure comes from dozens of financial advisers, some scrupulous and some unscrupulous. He also says another common mistake winners make is to take the lump sum payment, instead of annuity payments over their lifetime, which can mean hundreds of thousands of additional dollars. “If you take the annuity payments, you can make those common mistakes that most of these people make the first two, three, four years, and still have most of your lottery winnings left to be distributed to you, but everybody wants to take the lump-sum distribution and it’s a big mistake.”
The odds of one person winning tonight’s jackpot are 292.2 million to one.
© WLS-AM 890 News, 2016
