lottery

A Four-Time Lottery Winner Reveals His Secret

Posted on 05/15/2013 by | News, Culture, Sights and Sounds | Comments

Bulletin TodayWho you gonna call for luck as tonight’s $360 million Powerball drawing approaches? (Update: the jackpot has grown to $550 million in advance of the drawing May 18 – it’s now the third largest in history.) Well, if you want someone to blow on your ticket, you could do worse than to find retired postal worker Melvyn Wilson, a four-time winner of Virginia’s scratch-off lottery games. “Mr. Lucky,” as Wilson, 72, has come to be known, just won $500,000 in …

Fighting for the Crime Victims Who Don’t Make Headlines

Posted on 04/24/2012 by | AARP Blog Author | Comments

Money & SavingsThis is a guest post from Stuart Delery, the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Gloria” was thrilled to get the call telling her she had won $5 million in a Jamaican lottery. In her 70s and living alone, Gloria had never been to Jamaica. But she wasn’t about to turn down a windfall. All Gloria had to do to collect her enormous winnings was pay the taxes and insurance—up front. A week later, the lottery …

Playing the Lotto: Proceed with Caution

Posted on 11/4/2010 by | General News | Comments

Money & SavingsMore than $70 billion dollars: that’s the amount of money that was spent on lottery tickets in North America last year. Seems like a lot of money to be spending on a thrill that usually only lasts a few minutes, according to state lottery commissions (and this AARP article), the odds of winning a grand prize in state lotteries can be as outlandish as 1 in 175 million, depending on the game. Is spending money on such a slim chance …