The DA’s office said the victim asked Argueta to claim the prize on his behalf to remain anonymous, promising $50,000 of the prize.
Argueta, who lived in Virginia at the time, agreed to claim the prize on the victim’s behalf and drove to New York to receive the winnings.
At the time, though, the New York State Gaming Commission was not accepting winning tickets in person, so Argueta mailed the ticket to the commission on Nov. 13, 202, instead.
Within weeks, Argueta reportedly went to deliver the NYS Lottery paperwork to her cousin, which said the price winnings totaled $20,000. Along with the paperwork, she handed her cousin an envelope with $13,436 in cash, and said the rest was held for taxes.
The victim found a press release from the NYS Lottery website saying Argueta claimed the $1 million prize and received a lump-sum payout of $537,440 after taxes, the DA’s office said.
The DA added that the victim called Argueta, who said she did not have any more money and if continued to call her, she would take legal action. In May 2022, Argueta forfeited $317,857.13 in winnings from her bank account, which were returned to the victim.
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https://nypost.com/2023/01/22/texas-woman-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-cousins-1-million-winning-scratch-off-ticket/The valuable lesson that can be learned from the story above is that if you want to remain anonymous for your lottery winnings, do it yourself, and don't entrust money-related matters to other people
(even if that person is someone close to you)if i were am victim, i will not reconcile with that cheating cousin, unless she returns all my winnings that she has used, how about you?
in real life money is a very dangerous item, money can break family, relatives, close friends. so dealing with big money should be done alone rather than handing it over to friends or relatives, that would be a different story.
I think it's also worth gambling or betting on online gambling when anonymity will be more maintained on online gambling platforms. I mean when betting on online gambling we may be asked for KYC and maybe some people know us or know when we win big but only certain people know and we can take care of it ourselves when there are problems.
it's different from direct gambling, when we bet, many people will see us, and when we win big, many people will know and of course there will be many who claim to be good friends in a nutshell because they know it's big money. so that later there will be many who claim to be relatives or claim to be close friends when holding a lot of money and in the end they will be deceived.
after reading the article above, I wonder why he didn't just take care of it himself instead of having to involve other people and end up being conned. very sad.