Gosh, it's swell of the California Lottery to let what's-his-face know, in the most invasive and hamfisted way possible, that he's a winner — except that he already knows that, as lottery officials have also alerted the media to the fact that the winning ticket holder has evidently checked his ticket several times at various machines."We see this as an integrity and transparency issue," said Russ Lopez, California Lottery Deputy Director of Corporate Communications, in a statement. “The California Lottery truly believes that when a person buys a lottery ticket with the hope and prayer of changing their lives, we should do all we can to connect them with their winnings. We believe this effort will make a lot of Californians very happy.”
What's really happening isn't a "transparency issue," obviously, but a quasi-government agency employing tabloid journalism tactics to further publicize and promote its ultra-long-shot gambling product, which Warren Buffett once called "a tax on the stupid."
So know this if you buy a winning lottery ticket in California: You may wish to remain anonymous while getting your affairs in order and consulting with attorneys (and perhaps having an attorney claim the ticket for your trust so that every grasping friend and relative and burglar and stalker and grifter won't come after you) but the California Lottery may decide to veto your sensible choice and release security camera footage of you to the entire world, as if you were a bank robber.
Thank you for your post. You're completely right.
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