A young woman has shared the downside of winning a life-changing amount of money through the lottery.
Winning millions of pounds in a jackpot win is a fantasy for many - let's face it, we've all had the thoughts of what we would do if we won that life-changing amount of money!
It's something fun to think about, but for almost everyone, it'll never happen.
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But for this Canadian woman, the dream became a reality when her father won an eye-watering $17.3million (£10million), though she revealed how winning the lottery isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
Speaking to the Other People's Lives podcast, she chose to remain anonymous and shared the scary story of someone getting in touch with her after the lottery win.
The woman revealed that a British fraudster tried to get in touch with her and other relatives, pretending to be family.
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“We’ve actually been scammed and catfished by people pretending to be our family asking for money,” she revealed.
The good news is that the fraud attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, but she was shocked that people knew all the details of them and the win.
When her father hit the jackpot, he chose to selflessly share the wealth through the extended family, with aunts, uncles and cousins getting '25 grand each', according to the woman.
However, when people who were in her life found out about the win, such as people who went to her high school, came out and started to say 'random rude s***' to her, for some reason.
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Later, she had the big revelation that complete strangers emerged that seemed to know intricate details of her life, while pretending to be family.
“We had people pretending to be our family on random numbers messaging us and emailing us and making up these ridiculous stories to say that they need money,” she explained.
“The fact that they’re naming people by name – that's the part that actually really scares me.”
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The woman revealed that her aunt got a WhatsApp message from someone pretending to be a distant relative in the UK, and thought it was real until she spoke with her about it.
“It was a different number but he was saying: ‘Oh yeah it's your uncle… we're struggling really really hard and could you please ask your brother my dad for money I need to put my son through school.
“He needs to go to university and it's going to cost this much and everything and it's just that's what actually really freaks me out because they know too many intimate details to use against you,” she recalled.
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The woman did highlight that winning the money has been a huge plus, but added that there were other negatives - with her dating life taking a hit for a while.
“It’s very, very rare that I tell people …and with relationships it's very tricky," she revealed.
“I just went through a bad experience with telling a guy that I was seeing and I definitely shouldn't have told him… I was just too excited and not sober and I just said it because I trusted him."
After he became a bit 'too eager', she realised that it may be best to withhold that information from people she dates in the future, at least until much later.
She further explained: “After I told him I thought that he was going to be normal, he had a normal reaction and so I thought everything should be fine. But wasn't fine. It seemed like his driving force after that was to want to make things work.
“[The money] was brought up a lot and he had a lot of uncomfortable questions to ask after the fact, so that wasn't great."
Topics: Money
Joshua Nair