A man wins $5 million in the lottery but doesn’t get the jackpot

A gambler named Ward Thomas, a resident of Long Beach, California, in the United States, has filed a lawsuit with the State Lottery Commission.

According to Ward, he is the legitimate winner of more than $5 million in lottery prizes that have never been paid out.

The process, which began in 2017, is more complex than it appears. This is because, according to an opinion of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, where the case was pending, whoever purchased the winning tickets was Ward’s son, Benjamin, who was a minor at the time.

Ward Thomas does not deny the allegations and explains that, quite modestly, he asked his son to go buy five scratch cards. When the boy arrived, Thomas discovered that one of the tickets was a prize.

After the happy discovery, Ward applied to withdraw the prize from the lottery where the tickets were purchased. However, only two months later he received the reply that the prize would not be awarded due to the age of Benjamin, who was only 16 years old when he bought the packing cards.

Since then, the non-committal winner has been locked in a legal battle to claim his prize.

Among the allegations made by Ward Thomas is that the California State Lottery Commission is acting in bad faith and disenfranchising him. Furthermore, Thomas says that in the lotteries where his son bought the tickets, there is no indication that minors are prohibited from playing.

In Ward’s case file, this statement is explicit. At no time was the Lottery informed that Benjamin Thomas could not act as an agent for the author [no caso o seu pai] For tickets,” the doc asks.

To defend themselves, lottery officials say they had in mind that Ward and his son Benjamin already knew that minors could not participate in lottery bets.

In this direction, the lottery itself sued Benjamin Word Thomas, claiming that the young man presented a false driver’s license to prove that he was 18 years old and capable of betting.

As of the time of this writing, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruling remains unfavorable to Ward and Benjamin, who have yet to see the color of the $5 million on the scratch cards.