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A woman who ended her marriage after winning $1.5M (N1.2 billion) has been ordered by the court to give all the money to her estranged husband.
The woman, Denise Rossi, who resides in the US had no other choice than to surrender her N1.2 billion lottery prize to her former husband after she hid the money from him during their divorce.
Denise won the jackpot 11 days before she filed for divorce from Thomas Rossi, her husband of 25 years.
During the divorce process, she refrained from telling him or the court about her winnings and hoped to keep them for herself.
However, her plan backfired when a letter from a company that paid lottery winners was mistakenly sent to Thomas’s apartment two years after their divorce.
Thomas was shocked to discover that his ex-wife had won N1.2 billion in the California State Lottery and had been receiving N25 million every year.
He sued her for violating the state’s asset disclosure laws and for acting fraudulently and maliciously.
A Los Angeles family court judge agreed with Thomas and awarded him all of Denise’s lottery money.
The judge noted that Denise could have kept half of the money if she had been honest from the start, but she lost her right to it by concealing it.
