Money can distort friendships and families. That's a given. But lottery money? It just seems like a ticket (ha!) to a world-class shit show. People hear the word jackpot, and act as though because you didn't earn the money--after all, it was just a moment of luck--that they're somehow entitled to it as well. Random people coming up to you at a restaurant, or harassing you by phone or knocking on your bloody door? It's the financial equivalent of the full moon. People take it as an excuse to act nuts, and they apparently get very, very angry when lottery winnings aren't shared with them.

Winning the lottery and avoiding that kind of nightmarish drama appears to require a constant vigilance for the rest of your life. Let it slip, and you're screwed. If you're lucky, you'll just get peppered with money requests that treat you if you're Santa Clause. Only real. Want to help people? You'll need to sort through the scams and the lies, first; honestly, you'd probably have more of an impact if you just cut annual checks to majority charities instead of trying to directly help people financially yourself. If you're unlucky, you get kidnapped and murdered as part of a harebrained scheme that never had a chance of actually succeeding. Which is just adding insult to injury.

There are lottery jackpot winners who avoid these kinds of twisted outcomes. But claiming your prize publicly is a great way to stack the deck against you, all but inviting the worst kind of human behavior to target you for the rest of your life. Ruthlessly maintaining your anonymity doesn't guarantee anything, but it would at least give you a decent start.