Unshocking Revelations: Undocumented Workers Can’t Redeem Lotto Prizes

Illegal immigrants who gamble feel cheated out of their winnings when lotto companies and casinos refuse to pony up without proof of papers. The gamblers claim that nowhere on a lottery ticket do the rules say the winner must be a legal U.S. resident in order to claim his or her prize. Several bittersweet anecdotes arise from this contradiction, like that of Hernán Blanco. The guy was in North Carolina when he got so close to redeeming $50,000, he could smell it; at the lottery office, however, he was denied the prize because he couldn’t produce a social security card or a valid state ID. Why didn’t Blanco just fake it, you wonder?

Ask Álvaro Toledo of California. Because he hired a legal resident friend of his to impersonate him and retrieve the dough, Toledo faces time behind bars instead of the opportunity to blow his $500,000 winnings. But that’s not as bad as what happened to the immigrant that hit the $2 million jackpot in Vegas in 1985. When casino officials realized he was residing in the States illegally, they handed him deportation papers instead of countless greenbacks.
Moral of the story? Sucks to be illegal and a winner.

Lotto a Rip-off for Illegal Immigrants [NCMOnline.com]
Image [here]