Mega Millions Lottery Winner: Maryland Resident! Additional Winning Tickets In Illinois & Kansas! Congrats!

Winning ticket for record Mega Millions jackpot sold in Maryland


Someone in Maryland is about to have a wildly euphoric weekend.

A Winning ticket for the record-breaking $640 million Mega Millions jackpot was sold in Baltimore County, the Maryland Lottery said Saturday.

Lottery officials are waiting for information on potential jackpot winners from other Mega Millions states.

The winning numbers in the Mega Millions lottery Friday night were 2, 4, 23, 38, 46 with a Mega Ball of 23.

California Lottery Commission spokesman Alex Traverso said 29 tickets sold in that state matched five of the six winning numbers. He said the payout will be about $125,000 to $130,000.

The multistate jackpot caused long lines at convenience stores, with many dreaming of creative ways to quit their jobs if they get the lucky numbers.

Sales skyrocketed at Manhattan Tobacco, a New York convenience store, cashier Alex Shanahe said. He said the store has proved to be lucky before, having sold winning tickets of $3 million and $5 million.

"The sales have tripled. Everybody wants to win the Mega Millions," Shanahe said before the drawing.

A single winner could claim yearly payments or a one-time cash option of $462 million, Mega Millions spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said.

The Mega Millions lottery is played in 42 states plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, lottery officials say.

The odds of winning the jackpot are about one in 176 million, which means a person would have a better chance of getting struck by lightning.

Myra Langford, 70, a retired school administrator, said she knows the odds but still bought five tickets.

If she wins, Langford said, she will help fix the roof of her church and move out of the cramped Queens apartment she lived in for the past 47 years.

"You got to be in it to win it," she said, parroting a commercial.

Economist Austan Goolsbee, a professor at the University of Chicago who also chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the winner or winners should take the lump sum instead of the annuity.

The choice comes down to interest rates, and with interest rates at zero, the lump sum just makes better financial sense, he said.

"If you are fortunate enough to win the lottery, you most certainly want to take the lump sum," Goolsbee said.

Psychologist Scott Bea said if a winner is a poor money manager and has been unhappy in life before winning, that's likely to continue.

"It solves one problem, but it creates a half-billion others," he said. "You have about no chance at winning this, but it really gets people excited."

His wife asked him if the couple could spend $10 on lottery tickets.

"We could probably flush it down the toilet and have the same outcome, but if it gives you some hope, why not?" Bea said.


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The Education Lottery: Helping Or Hurting Education

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The Current Educational System Protects Failing Schools.

President Obama's "Education Lottery" is helping to Change that system by forcing Public School Districts across the nation to improve Standards so that ALL Children regardless of Ethnicity or Socio-Economic Status can Achieve Academic Success.

Excellent!






Sources: Youtube

Abraham Shakespeare, Florida Lottery Winner Found Dead

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Body Of Missing Lottery Winner Found


Winning $30 million in the Florida Lottery should have been the best thing that ever happened to Abraham Shakespeare.

But with his newfound wealth came a string of bad choices and hangers-on who constantly hit him up for money. Nine months ago, he vanished. Friends and family hoped he was on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

On Friday, detectives confirmed that a body buried under a concrete slab in a rural backyard was his.

The home Shakespeare was found behind belongs to the boyfriend of a woman who befriended him in 2007, the year after he won the lottery. Authorities believe he was murdered and the woman may know something about it, but they do not yet know how he died and have not arrested anyone.

Shakespeare’s brother, Robert Brown, said Friday that Shakespeare often wished he had never bought the winning ticket.

“’I’d have been better off broke.’ He said that to me all the time,” Brown said.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s detectives used fingerprints to identify Shakespeare’s body, which they found buried 5 feet deep and covered by a 30-by-30 concrete slab in the backyard of a two-story ranch house. There are no neighbors, save for an empty trailer next door and an orange grove across the street.

Life changed in a bad way

When Shakespeare won the lottery, he was an assistant truck driver who lived with his mother in a rural county east of Tampa. He was barely literate, had a criminal record and was extremely generous with his newly acquired wealth.

“He really didn’t understand it at all,” said Samuel Jones, who has known Shakespeare since both were 12. “It was moving so fast. It changed his life in a bad way.”

Jones said Friday that Abraham told him in March that he wanted to get out of Lakeland, where he had bought a million-dollar home. After he chose a lump sum payment of nearly $17 million, people gathered outside his mother’s home, clamoring for cash.

Jones said Abraham would tell him, “I thought all these people were my friends, but then I realized all they want is just money.”

Among those new friends was Dorice Donegan “DeeDee” Moore. Shakespeare met her in 2007, shortly after he bought his home. She told him she was interested in writing a book about his life.

But officials said she was interested in his money.

“DeeDee Moore is a con artist, and if she tried to sell me anything, I certainly wouldn’t buy it,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a news release earlier this month. “DeeDee Moore has cheated Abraham Shakespeare out of his money, and possibly his life.”

Moore — whose known phone numbers were all disconnected Friday — became something of a financial adviser to Shakespeare.

Property records show her company, American Medical Professionals, bought his home for $655,000 in January 2009. In February, she helped him open a company and gave herself the ability to sign for money, detectives said, including a $1 million withdrawal.

Moore told detectives Shakespeare gave her the cash as a gift. She bought a Hummer, a Corvette and a truck, and went on vacation.

Three months later, 26-year-old Shar Krasniqi — identified by Judd as Moore’s boyfriend — bought the home in Plant City that Shakespeare’s body was found behind. A tip led detectives there this week.

Howard Stitzel, who happened to be Shakespeare’s lawyer in a child support case, started working out of Krasniqi’s home after Shakespeare disappeared.

Stitzel said he could not comment when reached by The Associated Press on Friday. His lawyer, Glenn Lansky, said Stitzel rented space in the home in mid-2009.

“The landlord was DeeDee Moore,” Lansky said. “If the police have any questions, we’ll answer them.”

A phone number listed in public records for Krasniqi rang to Stitzel’s law firm Friday.


Rapid rise and fall

Shakespeare was last seen in April. Moore, who spoke several times to the Lakeland Ledger newspaper last year about his disappearance, said he was “laying low” because people constantly tried to get money out of him.

She also told the paper she helped Shakespeare disappear. But Polk detectives say she tried to make it appear that he was alive for several months, at one point using his phone to text his relatives and friends.

Detectives say Moore also paid one of Shakespeare’s relatives $5,000 to deliver a birthday card with cash to Shakespeare’s mother, suggesting it was from her son.

So far, only one person has faced charges in the case, but not for Shakespeare’s disappearance or death. Troy McKay Young, 42, a Lakeland police officer, was charged with unlawful compensation and misuse of confidential information after detectives said he provided Moore with information he obtained through law enforcement databases.

Meanwhile, friends and family puzzled Friday over Shakespeare’s rapid rise and fall. Jones said his friend lived a humble life, and just before he bought the winning ticket he joined a church and was baptized.

“When he won the lottery,” Jones said, “he forgot about being saved.”



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