Three public school employees nab share of record jackpot
Includes video report
By Todd Northrop
The Maryland Mega Millions lottery winners are three Maryland public school employees, who split the world's biggest lottery jackpot with two other winners from Kansas and Illinois.
The trio claimed their share of the jackpot Monday at Maryland Lottery headquarters.
Maryland laws allow lottery winners to remain anonymous when collecting their prize, and the winners chose that option in this case.
Maryland Lottery Director Stephen Martino said the employees will each receive $34.997 million after taxes. They had purchased a total of 60 tickets at three different locations throughout the state, or a total investment of $20 per person.
"It is the first time that the three friends have pooled their money together," Martino said.
The three winners are a woman in her 20s, another in her 50s, and a man in his 40s. One employee is an elementary school teacher, another is a special education instructor and the third works in an administrative role. Two have other part-time jobs.
The youngest of the group held onto the tickets and checked them immediately following the drawing. "I had all 60 tickets spread across my floor," she said. "Once I realized one was a winner, I called my two friends right away."
"That evening, I forgot about the drawing and went to sleep," said one winner. "It was around 11:30 p.m., and my phone just kept ringing and ringing. I finally decided to answer it, thinking something was wrong." Once she picked up, the two other winners were on the phone and said, "Get dressed. We're coming over right now."
After discussing the win, the threesome came up with a plan. "We made copies of the ticket, and we each signed the copies," said one of the women. "At 1 a.m., I took the ticket and drove to my mother's house to put it in her safe. I didn't even take time to pack any clothes — I just drove."
When the group arrived at lottery headquarters Monday, Martino said one of the winners took a small white envelope of out of her purse that contained the winning Mega Millions ticket. The winners had made three copies of the ticket and each signed the copies, he said.
The actual ticket wasn't signed by all three winners until Monday at the lottery's conference room table, Martino said. The ticket was then handed over to lottery security and its authenticity was verified, he said.
The winners' future plans all include new homes. One also plans to take a backpacking trip through Europe, while another will pay for his daughter's college education, Martino said. A third winner will tour Italy's wine country, he said.
"Most importantly," one winner said, "we're going to be careful with how the money is spent. I watched coverage of the jackpot win on television all week, just so I could listen to the financial advice the professionals were offering."
All three have indicated they intend to remain employees within Maryland's public school system.
"They were modest, and humbled," said Martino. "These are precisely the people you would want to see win the lottery."
A total of three winning tickets were sold across the country for the $656 million March 30 Mega Millions drawing matching the winning numbers 2, 4, 23, 38, and 46, with Mega Ball number 23.
Speculation about a Maryland ticket reached fever pitch last week when a Maryland woman, Mirlande Wilson, 37, said she had the ticket, then alternately claimed she had lost it and had hidden it inside the McDonald's restaurant where she works. Her attorney, who admitted he couldn't back up her story, said she wanted to be left alone.
As many suspected, the story was a hoax. Lord knows why people do these things, but the woman fabricated the whole thing.
The anonymous winners bought the winning ticket at a 7-Eleven store in Milford Mill outside Baltimore. The retailer will receive a $100,000 agent bonus for selling the winning ticket.
Lottery officials increased the final jackpot to $656 million after tallying sales from the 44 lotteries that offer Mega Millions. The jackpot was the biggest in Mega Millions history and the three winners — one in Maryland, Illinois and Kansas — will each get more than $218 million before taxes.
Kansas' winner also decided to remain anonymous. (See Kansas Mega Millions winner claims jackpot anonymously, Lottery Post, Apr. 6, 2012.)
The Illinois winner has yet to come forward to claim the prize.
RAW VIDEO: Watch the Maryland Lottery press conference
(Click to display full-size in gallery)
Congrats "real" winners!!!
Just as I thought.
More than likely what happened to Mirlande Wilson was that she thought she won without checking her numbers, preached it to the world, found out she didn't win, and had to claim she lost the ticket to hide the humiliation.
Obviously a first time lottery player.
One of the pool members had laid out all sixty tickets on the floor as live TV results came in, and was totally shocked to see that one ticket
had all the numbers. When one member was contacted at 1:00AM in the morning, they thought an early April fools joke was being played.!!!
They did everything "right", and this was the first time they had ever formed a pool together. Talk about beginners luck!
CONGRATULATIONS to the winners!!!
Glad that the money is going to some relatively drama free claimants...
Let the good times roll!
Finally, this story has a happy ending! This is great to hear.
Congrats to the winners!
They seen like nice people!
We finally know where the "McDonalds" lady lost her ticket ......... it fell onto one of the 3 amigos kitchen table somehow!
The next jackpot stop is the 'dale in PA! I am not allowed to claim via blind trust in PA, so I will form a RLT after I claim the money so that the name of the trust is not in the media!
1
I've updated the story significantly with additional information and quotes from the winners.
Thanks Todd!
well i'm be,teachers winning the lottery. good for them! now they can retire and live the good life with 34 million dollars, will go a long way. congrats to them,spend it wisely. wish i could have had won a piece of it,but my tickets did'nt have any numbers matching....O well maybe next time......
Congrats to the teachers and their respective families. I truly hope their lives are comfortably lived and all their travel plans are enjoyed. Pretty smart to remain anonymous, although there is enough information in the above to have more inquiries by various persons............................ Thanks for the great story Todd.....
They all said that they are going to keep their jobs.Yeah,right!Maybe until the end of the school year.
That would be tough to keep your job for another couple of months with 35 million sitting in your bank account. I honestly would have to do some deep soul searching on that one. But going to work with that kind of money ?? I am quit sure I could put a smile on my face and be tolerant of any group of kids for another 8 weeks.
Truly, congrats to them! They did everything correct - copying the ticket, signing the back, going anonymous.
Ironically, I almost bought tickets with 2 other friends - one of us is in our 20's, one is in our 30's, and the other is in their 40's - just like them! And we all have other jobs, in addition to the one we all work at. However, I was worried about buying us all tickets, while buying my own too. I didn't want what happened at McDonald's to happen to us. So I didn't approach them for us to all go in together. Hmmm.... maybe if I had.....
I agree with you. A school system is the worse place to try to keep a secret. I bet the kids already know who won and where they live.
If they were to suddenly quit it wouldn't be very hard to figure out why.It would be impossible to remain anonymous under the circumstances.Besides that,teachers are under contract for the entire school year.
Congrats to the winners! Sometimes a pool works out!
Love those matching outfits, Congrats to the real winners.
Yay! Now let's leave them the #$%^ alone!
They may have picked up their winnings anonymously, but there are several people that know they won. As time goes by even more people will figure it out, but it will be nothing like had they not collected the winnings anonymously.
Had Wilson actually had the winning ticket, we could have months to discuss all that drama.
Congrats to the Maryland winners, may all their dreams come true!!
Congrats to the actual Winners
Well Done 
Hopefully a "last time" one as well.
Good thing they at least shared some background information about themselves. This will allow those McDonalds employees who were a part of Mirlande Wilson's pool to just go about their business making happy meals. Lesson learned from this fiasco even though the real winners had formed an ad hoc lottery pool that could have resulted in similar drama had the lady with the tickets had been unscrupulous is to either never join a lottery pool or treat entering into one the same way you would buying a house...by making sure all participation rules and protocol are established before any drawing. If this lady was like that NJ guy who recently lost his court case and now has to share that win, we would be witnessing yet another story that could aptly be titled, "When Playing Lottery Pools Go Wrong".
Well, we can all forget about Mirlande Wilson now. I am sure her fellow McDonalds co-workers will NOT be including her in future lottery pools...but then again, lottery pools and fools go together it seems.
I bet alot of the employees said no to a 20$ pool, and must be extremely upset right now. They should retire and give someone else a job.
Congratulations to the winners. The REAL winners!!!! What I like the winners are all different ages. In a few weeks they can quit their extra jobs and only work the 1 job if they want to keep working.
Stupendous
Smart group of teachers making their copies and securing the ticket in a safe. Kind of interesting they claimed so quickly. Hope they had enough time to consult with the right professionals.......Course, I guess they have time after the school year gets out..... If only I or any of the L.P contributors had that issue to confront
Congrats to the Winners......
Thanks Todd you the MAN!!!!!!
Congratulations to the winners. What a happy story!
Congrats to The Three Amigos!
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't giddy that they won!
Advice to Ms. Wilson, now would be a good time to keep your mouth shut, move to another city and slip into obscurity.
Honestly, I will be glad when all the Mega Millions hype is over with! oh and Congrats Again!
may you enjoy your
Good luck to the lucky trio!!
Looks like everybody has been duped. Mirlande Wilson obviously paid these 3 people off to come up with this "story". She's a clever one that Mirlande. She's probably sitting back right now wolfing down a couple of Big Macs while laughing at her poor unsuspecting McDonalds coworkers. Anyways, congrats to the three "winners" and Ms. Wilson.
Congrats to "The Three Amigos".What doesn't make sense to me,why didn't they make copies of the lottery tickets before the Mega Millions game not after ?. It's like the two who did not hold that winning ticket,did not trust the one who was holding that winning lottery ticket !.That's why the two other winners came over at 11:30 p.m. ."We're coming over right now." Wow. Lol.
And sometimes you workout in a pool ...............
Surprised that no one else finds it odd that the record jackpot was claimed by all anonymous people. Smells like a scam to me. Especially since 3 people won. I could understand one person wanting to be anonymous but not 3 people. The integrity of the lottery just went down yet again and that will cost them money. Congrats to the lottery headquarters for another fine cover up!
i know why bother posing with the check if youre going to hide behind it like a mugger in gloves.
The way the story reads, the person holding the tickets called the other two.
Procedure wise, people doing their first pool haven't had enough experience to come up with all sorts of rules & regs.
T*T............Looks like they had the honesty & personal integrity to trust each other and their word meant something ... While the rest of us have learned to look down the side of caution when it comes to pools because of the stories we share and have seen or been a part of. Glad to see morals prevailed over personal greed/mistrust..... .Kudos to the 3T's in MD.
Congrats to the real winners. I am so glad that this story had a happy ending afterall!