Lotto drama: What happens before winners take home a jackpot?

Everyone has their own version of the scenario stored away in the mind’s eye, an image of where you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing when you win the jackpot of your dreams. But let’s say the moment actually materializes, and you win the lottery. What comes next?

The answer depends on how much you’ve won. If it’s under $1,000 in Ontario, for example, the retailer where you bought the ticket can dole out the cash. (Lotteries across the country have only slight variations in their methods for processing winning tickets.) Over a grand and you’re asked to travel to Toronto—to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) Prize Center —with your signed ticket and two pieces of government I.D. Residents in far-flung towns can claim a prize at a satellite center if the cost of travel would eat up most of their lotto spoils.

The ticket will be checked out, your signature and identity verified. The sometimes stickier procedure happens next, when the gaming authority determines whether you are indeed the rightful owner of the now precious piece of paper, not a thief and not someone claiming sole-ownership of a ticket purchased in an office pool.

The lottery’s security team will ask a series of questions, only a few of which can be divulged, says Tony Bitonti, OLG spokesperson. The interview might begin with inquiries about where and when you bought the ticket, and if you purchased anything else with it. Are these your usual numbers? “We might ask what time you got the ticket and if you say, well, it was about 5 p.m., we’ll give you a few hours grace if the location is right,” he explains. The ticket itself is encrypted with its full history. Laura Piva-Babcock, spokesperson for the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) adds that the lottery can analyze patterns in its system, going back months and years. If information comes up during the interview that contradicts what the lottery knows, a fuller investigation begins. “We take as much time as we need,” says Piva-Babcock. “We don’t stop until we’re satisfied we have the right person.”

For most customers, this part of the protocol takes a few hours or a day. Once a winner is cleared, he or she must face one more potentially life-changing requirement before. All winners have to pose for an official photo holding a cheque declaring their prize amount. “No floppy hats, no big Jacquie Kennedy glasses,” says Bitonti, “though baseball caps and fedoras are okay, as long as your face is visible.” (This ostensibly means no full-body yellow bear costumes, which happen to be allowed in China.) Not every photo is sent out in a news release, but the big winners can count on it.

If you’ve won a “Hey, Martha!”-worthy amount, the OLG will also suggest a press conference. No one wants to talk to the press, says Bitonti, but his team encourages it anyway for winnings of, say, $25 million or more. This way reporters get their story and are less likely to pester new millionaires on their front porch. 

Although winners can refuse to speak to the media, the photo and public release of one’s name (which is posted to the lottery’s website for 30 days) is not optional. By signing your ticket, you’ve agreed to abide by the rules and regulations of the province’s gaming commission, and every province insists that winners must consent to a public record accounting of their good fortune, or forfeit the money.

Lotteries claim that this rule exists to protect the integrity of the game. People will lose confidence, and stop spending their money against ridiculous odds, if they can’t see that the prizes are being awarded, and that the winners aren’t the people selling tickets at the corner convenience store or the lottery president’s pals. Critics dismiss this argument, however, and complain that the photos and names are just marketing tools.

The problem is, the publicity subjects lotto winners to requests for handouts from long-lost relatives and outright harassment from strangers. They are often targeted by con artists. In the U.S., lotto winners have been murdered in Florida, Illinois and Michigan in the past three years alone.

Six U.S. states— Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and South Carolina—allow identities to remain private. New York’s government and others are considering bills that would essentially do the same thing. The New York Times reports that a State Senate bill in Georgia, for example, proposed granting anonymity to lotto winners who donated 25% of the prize money to scholarships. In some states a winner can hide behind a trust and send a lawyer to publicly collect the cheque. European lottery winners can make the call about going public or not.

Any individual who asks for anonymity in Canada—as B.C.’s “mystery winner” of a $50 million Lotto Max prize is reportedly planning to do—will have that request considered, and usually denied. Some scenarios seem to justify exceptions: Illinois State Lottery allowed one woman to go unnamed because she held a protection order against an ex-boyfriend. In Winnipeg, an undercover cop was once spared the public fanfare. If such an agent were to win in Ontario, says Bitonti, “we would still take the picture, but we would not send it out in a news release.” And the officer’s name would still appear on the list of winners.

Piva-Babcock says that very few B.C. winners have ever managed to stay in the shadows. “I don’t have the number, but it’s very rare,” she says. As it turns out, a corporation could accept a prize as a “person” under the province’s legal guidelines. (The same is not true in Ontario.) But it’s unclear whether going that route would help someone dodge the spotlight. According to BCLC, if a corporation stepped forward, “Determination of who would be appropriate to officially be photographed accepting the prize would be made on a case-by-case basis.”

If the unknown ticket holder is ever declared the winner, there’s still a chance that the who-won-it drama could drag on.