Lottery winner who kept win secret from wife has been ordered to give her part of the winnings
Niamh Spence
Featured Image Credit: Guangxi Welfare Lottery Centre/F. Cortes-Cabanillas/Alamy Stock Photo
An unlucky man in China has been ordered to hand over part of his £1 million lottery win to his wife after she discovered he'd kept the win a secreta and given some of his prize money to his ex-wife and sister.
The man, identified by his surname Zhou, was lucky enough to win big on China's national lottery and won the grand prize sum of 8.43 million yuan (£1 million) two years ago.
Yet instead of shouting from the rooftops about his winnings, he remained tight-lipped and handed out some of the dosh to his sister and to his ex-wife.
In total, he gave away 2.7 million yuan of his total winnings, leaving 5.73 million yuan for himself.
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Rather than tell his wife, named Lin, about their new found finances, Zhou kept it quiet.
That was until Lin discovered the prize money and angrily filed for divorce, asking a court in China's Zhejiang province to split their property equally.
In addition to asking for half of their property, she also asked to be paid two-thirds of the 2.7 million yuan (£326,900) that was hidden from her.
Unfortunately for lottery winner Zhou, the court filed in favour of Lin and ordered him to pay the two thirds of hidden winnings. On top of this, they cited that Zhou had 'embezzled' from his wife and she was due half of the winnings.
According to Chinese news outlet The Hangzhou Daily, neither has appealed the court ruling meaning Zhou hasn't fought back against the court's decision and will instead be digging deep into his winnings for his ex-wife.
Elsewhere in lottery news, a lucky lottery winner who has bagged $4.6 million over four jackpots has claimed there are some problems about getting such a life changing amount of money.
Since 1999, Mike Luciano has won four separate jackpots, but revealed the epic winnings caused issues in his personal life.
The four-time lottery winner revealed the hardest thing about winning such huge amounts of cash, and it comes down to spending.
The winner issued a stark warning after confessing that his main issue was figuring out how to control his spending habits when he had more money than he know what to do with.
He told the Daily Star: "Winning money in the lottery obviously is very helpful, it helps the family, helps you get that little break in life. But there’s also drawbacks to winning money.
"The hardest thing with winning money is, you know, you have to control your spending habits. Winning a lot of money like that isn’t as much money as you think, it can go pretty fast, and you have to be careful.
"It's been well-documented that I played a lot of lottery in my life and I’m trying to cut back, trying to control this. I should probably quit or cut back. I've been trying for several years now."