\nPals Who Tossed $1 Million Lotto Ticket Sue New Jersey for Cash
\n\tErik Larson, Bloomberg \u00b7 <\/p>\n
\t(Bloomberg) \u2014 Two best friends who say they threw out a $1 million winning New Jersey lottery ticket, based on outdated information, sued the lotto agency over claims it updated the lucky numbers on its website too slowly.<\/p>\n
\tThe men, Salvatore Cambria, 42, and Erik Onyango, 30, who live together in Suffern, New York, should get the cash because they hold two other important slips of paper: the tickets issued just before and just after the winner was purchased at a 7\/11 store in nearby Mahwah, New Jersey, on March 23, 2013, their lawyer, Edward Logan, said today.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThey threw in together for a few bucks on the tickets, like people do,\u201d Logan, of Princeton, said in an interview. \u201cThere\u2019s no blood or gore or sexiness \u2014 they just lost a million-dollar lottery ticket. It\u2019s a human tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe New Jersey Lottery Commission and Governor Chris Christie are named in the lawsuit filed June 24 in federal court in Trenton. The lotto agency that runs the Multi-State Powerball in New Jersey was negligent in failing to update its website fast enough, the men say in the complaint. For the agency to keep the prize amounts to \u201cunjust enrichment,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\tJudith Drucker, a spokeswoman for the lottery agency, declined to comment on the litigation. Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Christie, also declined to comment, directing all questions to the Lottery Commission.<\/p>\n
\tPizza Pickup<\/p>\n
\tOnyango, a Kenyan who has lived in the U.S. for nine years, said in an interview he purchased the tickets for $14 while picking up a pizza. He said he split them up, as he usually does, giving Cambria what turned out to be the winner and holding on to the other two for safe keeping.<\/p>\n
\tOnyango said he looked up the winning numbers on his mobile phone about 10 minutes after they were announced at 10:59 p.m., while he watched a movie at home on a Saturday night. He read out to Cambria the old winning numbers over the phone, mistakenly thinking they were new, he said.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI gave him the numbers that were on my iPhone, only to realize later those were the numbers for the last drawing,\u201d Onyango said. The date displayed on the screen \u201cis really small,\u201d which the state should have anticipated since \u201cwe do everything on our phones and computers now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe ticket they tossed out had five of six correct numbers, but it didn\u2019t pick the Powerball, according to the complaint. That left the men with a \u201cconsolation prize\u201d of $1 million, they said.<\/p>\n
\tTrash Gone<\/p>\n
\tBy the time the men realized their mistake days later, the trash had been taken out and the winning ticket was gone, Onyango said. Onyango still had the two losing tickets, he said.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe one fellow, Erik, that\u2019s just in his character to hold onto stuff and the other fellow, Salvatore, it\u2019s in his nature to throw stuff away,\u201d said Logan, their lawyer.<\/p>\n
\tCambria, who has a small business selling cleaning products to mechanics, said in an interview that business has been slow.<\/p>\n
\tThe winning money will help, said Onyango, who has a logistics job at a Stryker Corp. orthopedics facility in Mahwah, New Jersey. He said he injured himself last week and is working \u201coff and on\u201d while going to physical therapy. Onyango would split the money with Cambria and open an accounting or tax business, he said.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cYou\u2019ve got to be optimistic in life,\u201d Onyango said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing greater than friendship, and having a friend who is there to support you,\u201d he said of Cambria. \u201cHe\u2019s like my second family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe case is Cambria v. New Jersey Lottery Commission, 3:14- cv-04037, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (Trenton).<\/p>\n
Posted by:<\/strong> RFink13 on June 28, 2014, 12:44 am<\/p>\n \tThis case along with these two idiots should be tossed out of court. Make them pay the state’s legal fees for filing a merit less lawsuit.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pals Who Tossed $1 Million Lotto Ticket Sue New Jersey for Cash Erik Larson, Bloomberg \u00b7 (Bloomberg) \u2014 Two best friends who say they threw out a $1 million winning New Jersey lottery ticket, based on outdated information, sued the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}