Officials waiting for Lotto winner to claim prize

The announcement that a customer won a big Missouri Lottery prize didn't bring a rush of people looking for luck to the Jackson BP, employees said Wednesday.

Sales of lottery tickets were about normal, cashier Becky Archer said. And workers at the convenience store on East Jackson Boulevard still don't know who will collect the $3.7 million Missouri Lotto jackpot from Saturday night's drawing. "We hope it is a regular customer," Archer said. "But we don't know if it was a regular customer or someone passing through for the holidays."

And Missouri Lottery officials said they, too, are waiting for word from the ticket holder. The lottery's online games vendor knows when the ticket was sold, lottery spokeswoman Susan Goedde said, but that information won't be revealed until the winner is announced because of security concerns.

The Missouri Lottery has dealt with altered tickets and other states have had to fight fraudulent claimants seeking big prizes, Goedde said. "We take security very seriously here."

Whoever won the ticket should be careful and speak to an accountant or lawyer before claiming the prize, said Bev Gibson of Jackson, who along with her husband, John Gibson, won a $4.3 million Missouri Lotto prize in 2003. The Gibsons elected to split their money, taking half of the prize's cash value right away and taking the remainder in equal installments over 25 years.

"We paid over $1 million that first year in taxes," she said.

Big prizes in lottery games like Missouri Lotto or Powerball use the portion of ticket sales to purchase annuities designed to provide the announced jackpot in equal payments over 25 years. Winners have the choice of taking a cash payout of the money that would purchase the annuity -- $2.3 million in the case of the latest Jackson winner -- and paying the applicable taxes.

For Missouri Lotto and Powerball, the portion dedicated to prizes is 50 percent of the total ticket sales. The remainder goes to the state treasury, commissions for retailers and operating the lottery. That is a lower portion than other games. On average, the lottery pays out 61.8 percent of its sales in prizes.

Other than the taxes during the first year, the Gibsons are happy with their lottery winnings. After a rush of calls from relatives and other people they hadn't heard from in years, their lives pretty much returned to normal, Bev Gibson said.

They built a new house on a three-acre lot last year, helped a family member who had a heart attack pay medical bills and paid off their children's debts, Bev Gibson said. "That is about all we have done with it," she said.

They both grew up poor, she said. Her husband was only 2 years old when his father died, she said, and her parents were sharecroppers. "We grew up learning how to pinch a penny," she said. "But that doesn't mean we pinch pennies now. If the kids need something, if our daughter wants to go shopping, off we go."

The Gibsons would be glad to offer some advice to the new winner if they want it, Bev Gibson said. "I wish they would call us. You are going to get this one check you aren't expecting immediately and you have to go to your bank and have it set up to receive it."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126