Earlier this week, Mirlande Wilson, the Baltimore woman who claims she purchased one of three winning tickets in last week’s $656 million Mega Millions drawing, refused reporters’ requests to see the lucky slip of paper.
Now she says she can’t even find it.
At a supposed press conference yesterday, Wilson, a 37-year-old mother of seven children, showed up late and then proceeded to not say anything. Instead, her attorney, Eddie Smith Jr., did the talking, while Wilson sat behind him, sometimes chatting or texting on her phone, The New York Post reports.
Wilson previously said that the ticket might be stashed at the McDonald’s restaurant where she works, but that only seems to muck things up further. Wilson incensed her coworkers when after being tasked with buying a group ticket for the restaurants’ employees, she said the winning ticket she allegedly possesses was purchased separately.
Meanwhile, it seems even Smith might not believe his own client. “I can’t say with any certainty that this ticket exists,” he told reporters “You never say that it’s so until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.”
If Wilson indeed has a winning ticket—somewhere, anywhere—her share is worth $218.6 million paid over 26 years or a lump-sum payment of $157.8 million, before taxes. But at this point, do we really want to listen to her anymore? Maryland lottery officials have confirmed that a winning ticket was purchased at the 7-Eleven store where Wilson claims she bought hers.
At this point, Wilson needs to either find the ticket and claim the money, or risk ending up as one of two things: Either a would-be fameball who distracted the media for a week, or the woman who lost a $218.6 million lottery prize.
And elsewhere, people in Maryland might just want to shut up in general about this Mega Millions drawing. Michael Dronet, of Glen Burnie, was publicly embarrassed after a friend created a fake winning ticket and he, thinking it was real, called his mother in Mississippi, who in turn alerted local news organizations with the news that her son was a new millionaire. The Baltimore Sun reported that Dronet fell for his friend’s prank because he, too, had purchased lottery tickets at the 7-Eleven where the winning ticket was sold.
