Powerball winner will give millions to charity

• A New Hampshire woman who won a Powerball jackpot worth nearly $560 million plans to give as much as $50 million to charity as a legal fight to keep her identity private proceeds, her lawyers said Wednesday.

The New Hampshire Lottery Commission handed over $264 million — the amount left after taxes were deducted — to the woman’s lawyers. They said she would give $150,000 to Girls Inc. and $33,000 apiece to three chapters of End 68 Hours of Hunger in the state. It is the first of what her lawyers said would be donations over the years of between $25 million to $50 million during her lifetime.

“My client doesn’t want any accolades. She doesn’t want any credit. She just wants to do good things,” said William Shaheen, one of the woman’s lawyers and the trustee for her Good Karma Family Trust of 2018.

“She knows there are many charities that do good work and need money but we want to start with these two … because she believes that the children are our future,” he said. “If we raise good children, we will have a good country.”

The unidentified woman signed her ticket after the Jan. 6 drawing, but later learned she could have shielded her identity by writing the name of a trust. They said she was upset after learning she was giving up her anonymity by signing the ticket — something the lottery commission acknowledged isn’t spelled out on the ticket but is detailed on its website.

A judge is considering her lawyer’s request that her privacy interests outweigh what the state says is the public’s right to know who won the money in the nation’s eighth-largest lottery jackpot.

The state says the law was clear on the requirement and failing to publicize her identity could erode trust in the lottery.

Little is known about the woman, and her lawyers have only said she is from southern New Hampshire and doesn’t want the attention that often comes with winning a big jackpot. Shaheen said she hasn’t yet quit her job and plans to remain where she lives.

The woman comes from a family of givers “and this is just part of a continuation of how she was raised,” Shaheen said. She hasn’t been in a position to give to charities in the past, he said.

Officials from the two charities appeared to be stunned by the donations, saying it dwarfed anything they had received before.