Here's what the big Lotto winners need to do next

Saturday, 29 February 2020

Lie through your teeth – that's the advice to the lucky winners of Saturday night's record $50 million Lotto Powerball Jackpot.

Two people have become our newest millionaires, each taking home $25.1 million after last night's must win draw. The winning tickets were sold at Countdown Manukau City Mall in Auckland and on MyLotto, also to a player from Auckland.

The record prize was also on track to draw a record number of players: 2000 tickets a minute were being sold on Saturday.

In the Lotto Winners' Room at the Auckland headquarters, the newly-rich are advised to tell as few people as possible, ideally just their partner.

If they can't manage to keep that quiet, a white lie will do. Lotto often recommends people say they won less than they did, Lotto spokeswoman Marie Winfield said.

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The advice to winners: keep your mouth shut.

Call it the ideal ruse: you can pop your champagne and drink it too, fobbing off would-be scroungers by saying you've spent all your winnings on paying off your mortgage.

Some winners fly under the radar by keeping their jobs and lives the same as they were, like the Auckland mum who still drives her $2000 car after her $19m win.

Another winner kept things quiet by putting their money into a trust, Winfield said. They told their immediate friends and family, bought a house and donated some to charity, and then gave the rest to a trust, which now pays them an annual 'salary'.

In the Lotto Winners' Room, the newly-rich are advised on what to do next.

The majority of winners do manage to keep it a secret, Winfield said, and never tell their friends or extended family.

To make sure your cover isn't blown by nosy friends, private investigator Mike Gillam from The Investigators New Zealand recommended winners resist the urge to splurge.

If you've just got a $50 million dollar windfall, your natural reaction might be to throw a party, book a lavish holiday or at least shout a round of drinks for your nearest and dearest. But 'any kind of instant exuberant show of wealth is one way to give it away,' Gillam said.

Winning Lotto can be like a funeral, Julia Hartley Moore says: everyone comes crawling out of the woodwork.

However, he acknowledged that keeping quiet is easier said than done: there are few people who are going to want to keep their old lifestyles if they've just come into $50m. While the winner might be able to keep the secret for a little while, he said six months down the track it is likely they will have been found out.

Private investigator Julia Hartley Moore said it was wise to make sure your money was tied up before anyone found out about it.

'Money brings out the worst in people,' she said, likening a Lotto win to a funeral: people you haven't seen in years will come crawling out of the woodwork to see if there's a dollar at the end of the day.

She has seen both ends of the spectrum in her work with Lotto winners. There was the everyday bloke, the one you'd never imagine to be a millionaire if you saw him on the street, who invested, started a business, and built his wealth. Then was the man who lost it all, frittering away his winnings, giving it to people he didn't even know.

She recommended talking to a good financial advisor – and no-one else.

In New Zealand, keeping a Lotto win a secret is a much easier task than elsewhere in the world. By law, winners can choose to remain anonymous.

Look to the US by contrast, and in most states winners aren't allowed to shield their identities. Instead they end up with pictures of themselves holding novelty-sized cheques splashed across newspapers after mandatory press conferences.

Time will tell whether Saturday night's winners manage to keep quiet – but keep your spidey senses on high alert.