You win a huge jackpot. You see no advantage to millions of strangers knowing anything about your finances, much less knowing your net worth.
So you go to a lawyer and ask how to remain anonymous. You want the simplest and most effective arrangement.
What’s the lawyer tell you? A revocable trust? Are there other options? How does your identity remain hidden? Is the info available only to the IRS?
…just planning ahead here… 
[ info will not be misconstrued as legal advice…]
This is what Powerball states:
I thought you had to do the whole “big check publicity thing”. Maybe I’m wrong.
In California, you are out of luck…at least in relation to keeping your extremely good luck a secret.
I suppose you could legally change your name and get a makeover and fake tan before the whole “Giant Cheque” thing. Then change your name afterwards…
It’s amazing what a few hundred million can do.
I looked into this in anticipation of winning Friday’s jackpot, and Virginia law does indeed require that I accept the prize publicly. Inevitably, my wife is going to find out.
“All but five states (DE, KS, MD, ND, OH) have laws that require the lottery to release the name and city of residence to anyone who asks.”
Oh goody. I live in the state that doesn’t require disclosure.
IANAL - but the lottery ticket is a bearer document. If you engage a lawyer (I should add whom you trust VERY MUCH) and sign the documents that authorize HIM to present the ticket and deposit the lump sum received into a trust that you administer, then the state may disclose the lawyer’s name but I am not sure they would be allowed to (or even know) which trust it was.
The UK lotto site is blocked at work but I’m fairly sure you can opt out of the publicity – I think Euro millions is the same.
There’s been a few times that you see that the jackpot has been won by someone in town X but there’s no name, no big handover, etc.
However, in general I think the organizers release the town name and, maybe, the name of retailer who sold the ticket. If it’s a big win the tabloids might send someone down to mooch around – with that sort of information it might not be difficult to work out who the winner is.
In the US would it be possible to get a lawyer to claim the money on your behalf? Or sell the winning ticket to a wealthy company / bank to avoid the publicity? I guess there’s something about tickets being non-transferable but if you could keep it quiet enough – which would be in everyone’s interest …
Maybe that’s where the stories of double lottery winners come from, they don’t win the second time someone sells them the ticket to avoid the publicity …
In any case, you’re going to have to cover up suddenly coming into a lot of money. The best way to do this is to wait a while before changing anything (2 months +), then have a cover story for coming into a modest sum of money – an inheritance is good. You’re going to have to resist spending stupid money locally, but you could travel and spend the money abroad.
Or move and reinvent yourself as someone more wealthy.
Or just give all the money away.
SD
Thought it’d be as simple as this. Set up a trust or nesting trusts. Have the trust representative (an exec from a bank/financial services corp.) sign the check and claim the prize on behalf of the trust. Controlling interest in the trust is held by you, or by a foreign corp controlled by you, and you have everyone else sign NDA’s with suitably Draconian penalties if they divulge your identity. Give the institution a big bit of the investment business from the prize and everyone’s happy.
Consult enough lawyers and accountants until your desired business structure meets regulatory approval.
Be a nice problem to have.
Edit. Oooh. Missed Terr’s comment, which is pretty much what I wrote, but much more elegantly.
Ah, I missed Terr’s comment too. Sorry about that.
Although thinking about it I wonder if there’s a tax implication bouncing the money around like that.
I guess it must have been done by someone somewhere. I can’t find any record of someone doing it but there’s details of how to do it at ehow.
Virginia law specifically provides that a trust cannot claim a lottery prize. It has to be one or more identified individuals.
As in the lawyer that you hire that transfers it to the trust.
The lawyer is just acting as an agent for the trust, and not individually claiming the prize. If the lawyer did actually claim the prize individually and then transferred it to a trust (set up for someone else’s benefit), that transfer would likely be taxable.
Sure. But if it is a charitable trust…
Then you can forget about buying that new mansion and baker’s dozen Ferraris.
I’ve thought about this (because the fun of buying a lottery ticket is the fantasy of what you would do if you won).
What I would do is just rent an apartment in a doorman building in a big city and use that address to claim the prize. Unless you have a very unusual name or start spending a lot of money very publicly, there’s no way that your long-lost friends or family members will know it’s you.
The only downside is that you might have to pay some extra taxes, for example New York City resident taxes.
Of course, the IRS will still know.
So, pick a building in a place with no income or special windfall taxes, like Houston.
Your example did make me wonder the following: how does a state in a multi-state lottery like the Mega Millions know that it’s able to tax the prize recipient? Does it go by the domicile of the claimant? Where the ticket was sold? Some other test? Could multiple states have a claim?
E.g., a person who works in NYC, lives in CT, buys a Mega Millions ticket on a business trip in TX. Which state gets to tax the person? What if the person does brazil84’s tactic of buying a new residence in a low-tax area, and then signs the ticket after the residence sale has completed?
At least in Texas, you have to claim large prizes in person. So, any intermediaries would have to come to Texas.
That, of course, opens things up to some messy situations where you might be taxed in the state you bought the ticket and also the state in which you reside. I’m not absolutely sure, but I would guess it works the same way as working in a low tax state but residing in a higher tax state.
If you live in CT, there’s no reason NY gets any of it, if you bought in Texas. But CT can still collect income taxes. I believe (not absolutely sure) you can take a deduction or credit for any income taxes Texas collects (which is $0) but you’re still on the hook for the rest.
As for the residence dodge, I’m not sure. You’d probably want to hire an attorney, and I’m not sure any CT tax authorities are going to buy any excuses if you’re still working in New York but trying to claim Texas residency.
Can you just get a P.O. Box in some far flung town and use that as your official address?
HAH!
We are at this moment having a bull session at work about how we would spend the money. One of the guys wants to have a throne on his front porch; he’ll sit on it for three hours a day and hear begging supplications from the peasants after his picture is shown accepting a ~$600 million check.