The title of the Beeb’s report on the latest British Gigantic Jackpot winner is: “UK winner of EuroMillions scoops £177m jackpot” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c154jn0gd0eo).
This of course is the stuff of many lottery players fantasies. In point of FACT 1% – £1,770,337 of the £177,033,699.20 would have been more than sufficient for the vast majority of lottery players which statistics demonstrate are mostly lower and middle income individuals.
As in many such cases before, the winner wishes to remain anonymous.
This of course will amount to a curse for the winner. This because only a very few individuals could actually carry this off effectively. This because most people have friends and families and in order to remain anonymous they would have to keep their new found wealth secret from them as well. Telling family will let the secret out. This is inevitably the case when there are children. Children rarely keep secrets and if they do their teachers will pick up on the signs and will call in the safeguarding officer as the suspicion will be child abuse. Thus when the social workers and police call the secret will be out.
Faced with this the winner will often face a lonely life of riches they have difficulty spending.
Because of this, the BG asserts that anonymity cannot be an option. Publicity is essential. Clearly there will be cases where individuals exposed to such publicity will find that the tabloid press might expose details about them they have hitherto kept secret. Legal consequences could follow. So be it.