For lottery winners, some anonymity is OK

Acase in New York has raised a question that comes up routinely in states operating lotteries: Should winners be able to remain anonymous? For the most part, anonymity appears the best policy and states should accommodate those wishes.

The New York case involves a 24-year old man who has won $5 million via a scratch-off ticket. The New York Post called him “the luckiest man in the city’s poorest borough.” But under New York law, the man can’t collect his winnings without taking part in a news conference that will reveal his identity to all. Given where he lives, that’s a problem.

The man told the newspaper, “All these people would know and I’m afraid they might come for me.” He plans to sue the state if he isn't allowed to collect the money anonymously.

A similar lawsuit was filed in New Hampshire by a woman who won a Powerball jackpot worth nearly $560 million. A judge recently ruled the woman’s identity can be kept private, but not her hometown. The judge wrote he had “no doubts whatsoever that should Ms. Doe’s identity be revealed, she will be subject to an alarming amount of harassment, solicitation, and other unwanted communications,” and concluded that the woman’s privacy interest outweighed any state interest in revealing her name.

Some states require lottery winners to participate in a news conference as a form of marketing for the lottery, based on the idea that other people are more likely to buy lottery tickets if they see real winners on TV or in the newspaper. Yet ticket sales appear tied much more to the size of the jackpot than any publicity regarding winners.

Those who play the lottery are also more likely to be low-income and less educated than the population at large. Forcing people from low-income backgrounds to announce they’ve come into giant sums of money is an invitation for harassment — or worse. In one of the most notorious cases, Abraham Shakespeare of Florida won $30 million in 2006. He was later killed for his money by a woman who “befriended” him after his lottery winnings were publicized. The woman took control of Shakespeare’s assets, killed him, buried him in her yard and poured a concrete slab above the grave.

Oklahoma law allows some level of anonymity by allowing winners to establish a trust. The Oklahoma Lottery Commission’s website states, “In accordance with the Oklahoma Open Records Act and the Oklahoma Education Lottery Act, the name of any individual, corporation, partnership, unincorporated association, limited liability company, or other legal entity, and their city of residence will be made public.”

But the challenges of establishing a trust may be daunting to a low-income individual with little experience in such matters. And even in states that don't require winners to appear in public, their names can often be obtained through public records laws.

Oklahoma law requires that lottery winners pay any back child support or unpaid taxes owed. In the first 10 years of the lottery, it collected $318,287 for the Department of Human Services and $181,000 for the Oklahoma Tax Commission. But that’s not the same thing as publicizing someone’s wealth and painting a bull’s eye on them for scam artists. State governments should err on the side of winners' anonymity over lottery marketing.