A man, known by his surname Zhou, has hidden lottery winnings of £8.43 million yuan (£1million) which he secured two years ago. He failed to present the winnings to his wife and has now been ordered by a court in China to repay his wife spouse after giving a chunk of the haul to his ex-partner.
The man was able to escape any attention as he didn’t hold any celebrations in honour of the winnings, but simply attended to life as normal.
But he transferred two million yuan to his sister and another 700,000 to his ex-wife, the Mirror reports.
Wife Lin filed for divorce after discovering what her husband had done, asking a court in the Zhejiang province to split their porperty equally.
She also asked to be paid two-thirds of the 2.7million yuan (£326,900) that was hidden from her.
A similar incident happened last year when a man accepted his winnings wearing a mascot costume so his family wouldn’t know.
He told local media at the time: “I’m really happy I won, but I don’t want my family to know about this since they might become too arrogant and complacent in the future.”
It comes after a mum in the UK claimed she was left “out of pocket” after failing to receive her National Lottery winnings.
Gemma Murray has told how she used the app to play the lottery for herself and her mum, and struck lucky in October last year winning £30.
But Gemma, from Kirkby, says she’s been left in limbo and is yet to receive the winnings.
The mum-of-one said: “Every month when we get paid, me and my mum put the lottery on for the month. She won three numbers – £30 – so I withdrew it from the account and we were told we’d get it by November 2, but we still haven’t had it.
“I’ve spoken to the lottery and they said the bank could trace it but the bank can’t find any trace through any of my statements and National Lottery keep fobbing me off. They told me last Friday it must be there but the bank has no evidence of it.”
