Man Who Claims He ‘Won the Lottery 11 Years Ago’ and Never Told Family Reveals How He Barely Spends It

A Reddit user who claims to have won the lottery more than a decade ago says that he’s only told one person: his therapist.

In a post shared on Thursday, May 14, on Reddit that has since gone viral, someone wrote, “I won the lottery 11 years ago. My family still doesn’t know. They think I’m broke.”

“I’ll answer pretty much anything,” he explained to fellow Redditors. “Just don’t ask me which state, which game, or which family member I almost told. Posting from an alt account, obviously. Been carrying this around for over ten years and it feels stupid to keep doing it alone. Ask whatever. Even the dumb ones, especially the dumb ones.”

The questions and comments were plentiful, with some people asking what he’s spent the money on, if he’s made any big purchases and why he decided not to tell people. Some people applauded him for his choice and said that they would do the same thing, in fear of family and friends taking advantage.

When asked if he had an “initial splurge,” the anonymous user said it took him “about three months” to pay for something he felt is overpriced.

“I was at a bar after a long shift and I ordered a $48 pour of pappy van winkle 15,” he said of the pricey bourbon whiskey. “Nobody was watching, the bartender didnt know me. i drank it alone in a booth and it was the first time i let myself really feel that the money was real. anticlimactic honestly.”

The Reddit user said that when he realized he “could literally drink one every night for the rest of my life without touching the principal,” it “stopped being fun.”

In order to maintain his secret, the Reddit user claimed that he lives in a “small place” approximately 25 minutes from his parents and drives an old Honda Civic. He also continues to shop at Target and still works as a library assistant.

The “closest” he came to spilling the beans was to his mom, who was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes around 2020 and couldn’t afford her insulin.

“She made me tea before i’d even said anything,” he wrote on Reddit. “I sat at her kitchen table and i could not get the words out. drove home and cried in my driveway for an hour. that night i wrote a fake ‘anonymous community medical grant’ letter, forged a fund name, and i’ve been paying her insulin under it for two years. she still thanks the fund in her prayers.”

He said the only person he told is his therapist, whom he was seeing “for about a year and a half starting at 21 when the secret was destroying my head.”

“She was the only person i ever told,” he explained. “She helped a lot. never did the lottery winner support groups, those exist mostly for people who came out as winners and got swarmed. my problem was the opposite. there isnt really a group for ‘i won and told no one’ because by definition you cant join it.”

He said the “actual enjoyment” of winning the lottery has been “the absence of money stress not the presence of stuff.” Aside from helping his mother, he also occasionally donates.

His library job is the perfect cover, he added. “Its the perfect job to look broke while not actually doing anything stressful,” he wrote. “Nobody asks the library guy why he isn’t doing more with his life.”