Lottery winner forced to give entire winnings to husband after highly priced mistake
Lucy Devine
Featured Image Credit: Fox/Getty Stock Image
A woman who won over $1 million on the lottery was forced to give her entire winnings to her husband.
Denise Rossi, from California, filed for divorce from her husband of 25 years just 11 days after she scooped the prize.
Concealing her winnings, it was only years after their split that her ex-husband, Thomas, discovered the win.
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He had received a letter - intended for Denise - which offered to "help hundreds of lottery winners like you around the country receive a lump-sum payment for the present value of their future annual lottery payments".
Thomas was totally confused, having never realised she'd won in the first place.
Turns out that Denise had the cheque sent to her mum’s house, withholding the information from her now ex.
In legal proceedings, the court heard how Denise had kept the winnings a secret. She tried to explain why the divorce came so quickly after the win, claiming she had been trying to leave the relationship for some time, according to the Mirror.
However, Thomas told PEOPLE: "She wanted me to move out of the house very fast. It wasn’t like her to act this way.”
Thomas went on to secure a court order, where a judge ruled she had not correctly disclosed her assets.
The judge ruled she had violated laws around the disclosure of assets and funds before a divorce.
She was ordered to pay her ex 20 payments of $66,800 - which was the entire sum of her win.
After the proceedings, Denise's attorney, Connolly Oyler, explained: "I could have argued successfully that it was her separate property.
"Or we could have argued and we would have reached some adjustment. But the judge got mad and gave it all to him."
Recently, we told you how one scratch card winner in Indiana saw her good fortune suddenly torn away from her after she made the mistake of posting about her win on social media.
Drena Harris won $500 on the scratch card and celebrated by posting a picture of her winning ticket on Facebook.
Unfortunately, however, Harris learned that her celebration would come back to bite her before she'd even had a chance to claim her prize.
After Harris posted the image of the winning ticket on Facebook, another internet user spotted it and used the photo to scam a store clerk into giving them the money.
The scam might not have worked if Harris had won much more on the scratch card, but retailers that participate in the Hoosier Lottery are allowed to pay out prizes of up to $600, meaning whoever carried out the scam was able to walk away with the cash.
Savage.