Woman who won $1,300,000 jackpot lost all winnings after keeping lottery win secret from husband
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: Fox / Getty Stock Images
Winning the lottery could help sort out many of your problems; however, it can also mean that problems are just about to begin.
Denise Rossi, from California, went through a nightmare scenario after winning the lottery jackpot when she attempted to hide her $1.3 million win from her ex-husband.
However, during their divorce, she was then forced to hand over all of her winnings to her ex-husband.
Ouch.
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There are countless stories of people going broke after poor investments and uncontrolled spending, but I think this might be the worse situation.
In fact, it would be hard to explain this to someone without them being able to find it a little bit comical.
Denise filed for divorce just 11 days after her big win and rather then come clean, she attempted to hide it - quite a difficult feat.
She filed for divorce from husband, Thomas Rossi, in December 1996 after 25 years of marriage. Should be simple enough, right? Wrong.
When the case reached court, a judge ruled that Ms Rossi had violated laws on disclosure of assets and funds and acted in fraud or malice.
She failed to tell her husband and the courts about the $6.6 million prize she won with five co-workers.
In her court documents, she argued that she didn’t want him ‘getting his hands on’ her winnings. Fair enough, except she wasn't hiding the odd bit of money, she was hiding over a million dollars.
Mr Rossi didn’t find out about the win until around two years after the divorce, when he got a letter from a company that pays the cash for lottery winnings.
The letter was addressed to his ex-wife, and said that the company had ‘helped hundreds of lottery winners like you around the country receive a lump-sum payment for the present value of their future annual lottery payments’.
Mr Rossi’s attorney, Mark Lerner, said: "I think he scratched his head for a while, saying: 'What? This can't be'."
So, he obtained an injunction a few days later and took his former wife to court.
There, it was ruled that his ex-wife must pay him 20 annual instalments of $66,800, although Ms Rossi’s attorney called the ruling ‘very punitive’.
Connolly Oyler, Denise's attorney, said that if she’d have disclosed her win to him, he might have been able to help save her from losing the fortune.
He 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."