Powerball secret

 Powerball secret: Someone in this little town won $731 million. Presently everybody needs a piece of it.

LONACONING, MD. — 카지노사이트 There haven’t been a lot of big wins in this little town tucked between gentle green mountains in Maryland’s far western reaches. Coal brought work, then took it away. The railroad meant prosperity, then stopped running. They made glass here, and then they didn’t.

These days, the line of cars at the First Assembly of God food giveaway is so long that the volunteers split each box into two smaller portions to feed more families.

But over the past few weeks, Lonaconing — the locals call it “Coney” — has acquired a new shine, a glint of gold in iron country. Sometime in late January, someone bought a Powerball lottery ticket at the Coney Market, and that ticket’s six numbers won the big one — $731 million, the biggest jackpot ever in Maryland and the fifth-richest payout in U.S. history.

Winners finally claim largest lottery prize in Maryland’s history
That someone lives in Lonaconing, according to the owner of the market. But because Maryland is one of seven states that allow lottery winners to remain anonymous, and because the winner is no fool, the identity of that someone isn’t public.

The fact that someone in this town of 1,200 people (just 400 families, actually, down by half over the past 50 years) is suddenly Midas-rich has caused some strange things to happen.

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안전한 카지노사이트 Customers scan losing lottery tickets at Coney Market, which has been besieged by gold diggers since January. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
An anonymous letter circulated naming a 76-year-old grandfather of seven and his longtime partner as the winners. Besieged with requests for free money, they denied being sudden multimillionaires.

Gold diggers filled town. Individuals displayed from Georgia and Ohio and Arkansas, requesting a piece of the prize to really focus on a sickly family member, or to save their striving ranch, or to pay for that European outing they've longed to take. 

A lady in Georgia kept in touch with the proprietor of Coney Market requesting him to get her a couple from trimming tools for her ranch. Another petitioner needed a piece of the lottery rewards to get her carport cleared. 

"They say, 'On the off chance that you don't ask, you don't get,' " said the person being asked, Richard Ravenscroft, who possesses the market. "Individuals don't have the foggiest idea about the champ's name. I'm the individual whose name they do know, 바카라사이트 so they ask me." 

Individuals from a huge number of miles away have sent cash in envelopes asking the market staff to send them lottery tickets from the fortunate shop.

 (Lottery deals at the market, generally an unobtrusive $4,000 per week, momentarily took off, then, at that point got back to earth, Ravens­croft said.)

Out-of-towners drove through the mountains to bet the very same set of numbers that the big winner had wagered on: 40, 53, 60, 68, 69 and Powerball 22. (Some folks in town thought the winning numbers might be the ages of the winner’s family. No: The jackpot combination was a random set of numbers selected by the lotto machine.)
A man from Northern Virginia showed up to ask Ravenscroft to reissue a purportedly winning lottery ticket that the man had lost. The man stayed in the shop for an entire day, and state police had to stop by to make sure things didn’t get too crazy.

It’s not just outsiders making a fuss about the big money. People up and down Main Street are eager — “Some are pretty impatient about it,” said Debbie Bennett, Coney Market’s manager — for the winner to donate a pile of cash to improve life in a town where the poverty rate of 24 percent is more than double the statewide number.