Powerball winner wants to donate $50M 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 from a lawyer that 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.