<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Poor young rancher wins $334m jackpot
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US lottery winner Neal Wanless said he plans to spend his newfound fortune wisely. In an uncanny twist, he purchased his ticket from a town called Winner. -- PHOTO: AP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Pierre (South Dakota) - It has the makings of a Hollywood script: A young rancher, struggling to eke out a living in one of the poorest corners of the country, claims one of the biggest undivided jackpots in US lottery history - US$232 million (S$334 million) - after buying the ticket in a town called Winner.
Mr Neal Wanless, 23, wearing a black cowboy hat and a huge grin, accepted his giant-size Powerball cheque at a ceremony on Friday.
Mr Wanless, who is single and lives with his parents on a ranch near Mission, said he is going to buy himself a bigger spread, repay the kindness other townspeople have shown his family and spend his newfound fortune wisely.
'I will not squander it,' he said.
According to family friends, the family has been facing lean times. Mr Wanless' father, Arlen, buys and sells scrap metal for a living and has seen his fortunes drop with the price of iron.
Mr Wanless bought US$15 worth of tickets at a store in Winner during a trip to buy livestock feed. He will take home a lump sum of US$88.5 million after taxes are deducted - an astonishing fortune, even more so in rural Todd County, the United States' seventh- poorest county in 2007.
His winnings are certainly enough to set him and his family up for life, but not all past lottery winners have had happy experiences.
Ms Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice in the mid-1980s but still managed to lose the entire US$5.4 million.
West Virginia's Jack Whittaker won US$315 million in 2002. Five years later, he was blaming the money for causing his granddaughter's fatal drug overdose, his divorce, his inability to trust and hundreds of lawsuits to be filed against him.
'I don't have any friends,' he said. 'Every friend that I've had, practically, has wanted to borrow money or something and, of course, once they borrow money from you, you can't be friends anymore.' AP
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US lottery winner Neal Wanless said he plans to spend his newfound fortune wisely. In an uncanny twist, he purchased his ticket from a town called Winner. -- PHOTO: AP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Pierre (South Dakota) - It has the makings of a Hollywood script: A young rancher, struggling to eke out a living in one of the poorest corners of the country, claims one of the biggest undivided jackpots in US lottery history - US$232 million (S$334 million) - after buying the ticket in a town called Winner.
Mr Neal Wanless, 23, wearing a black cowboy hat and a huge grin, accepted his giant-size Powerball cheque at a ceremony on Friday.
Mr Wanless, who is single and lives with his parents on a ranch near Mission, said he is going to buy himself a bigger spread, repay the kindness other townspeople have shown his family and spend his newfound fortune wisely.
'I will not squander it,' he said.
According to family friends, the family has been facing lean times. Mr Wanless' father, Arlen, buys and sells scrap metal for a living and has seen his fortunes drop with the price of iron.
Mr Wanless bought US$15 worth of tickets at a store in Winner during a trip to buy livestock feed. He will take home a lump sum of US$88.5 million after taxes are deducted - an astonishing fortune, even more so in rural Todd County, the United States' seventh- poorest county in 2007.
His winnings are certainly enough to set him and his family up for life, but not all past lottery winners have had happy experiences.
Ms Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice in the mid-1980s but still managed to lose the entire US$5.4 million.
West Virginia's Jack Whittaker won US$315 million in 2002. Five years later, he was blaming the money for causing his granddaughter's fatal drug overdose, his divorce, his inability to trust and hundreds of lawsuits to be filed against him.
'I don't have any friends,' he said. 'Every friend that I've had, practically, has wanted to borrow money or something and, of course, once they borrow money from you, you can't be friends anymore.' AP
