COPENHAGEN (dpa) – What is the first thing that a new millionaire needs when the confirmation of a huge lottery win comes through the postbox? In Denmark, it seems, the answer is medical treatment.
Dansk Tipstjeneste, the Danish lottery operator, questioned 800 people who had got the winning six number on their coupon and found that far from the sudden wealth prompting jubilation and celebration, many of the lucky players experienced fear and loathing.The survey found that more than a quarter of winners were so scared of facing the disapproval or greed of others that they didn’t tell a single other person about their windfall.“These people suffer from the fact that they can neither properly celebrate nor share their luck in other ways,” wrote Preben Bertelsen, in “Politiken” newspaper. He is an adviser at the national lottery company which ensures that brand-new millionaires are protected not just from psychological catastrophes but from financial mishaps too.“First Aid for Lottery Millionaires” is the title of a brochure that is automatically sent to the house of the tiny section of the Danish population that has won a million.“They all need help and invariably accept it too,” says Bertelsen. The worst cases, he says, involve the social repercussions for lottery winners who make no secret of their good fortune. He quotes the case of a couple in the North Sea town of Hanstholm who won 7.6 million krone (around 930,000 U.S. dollars).They were forced to leave the area after the neighbours slashed the tyres of their expensive new car and publicly humiliated them.“Envy, even in its most wicked form, is very easily provoked,” says Bertelsen. He advises his clients to either say nothing at all or to seriously play down the amount.The survey reveals that most people do just that: 56 per cent tell only their closest friends and relatives and almost all of them try to carry on with their lives with no visible changes.Only 3 per cent reduce their working hours, and four per cent resign their jobs altogether. And that is in a country with income tax at 60 per cent, where there is a real temptation to say goodbye to the day job.The lottery operator has counted 1,004 krone-millionaires since the first draw in 1989. Football pools used to be the traditional pastime for tipsters and the biggest win so far was 17 million krone.Asked for their first reaction to a huge win, 37 per cent of respondents in the survey ticked the box marked “disbelief”, with only 26 per cent experiencing “happiness and joy”. Two per cent even reported that they suffered from “sickness, sleeplessness and fear.”But everyone has their own personal view of things. Like the elderly Danish couple who contacted Bertelsen with the urgent request that the millions in prize money be struck from the coupon after all.They did not have any heirs and, after deep reflection, could not find any use for the money.“It was extremely difficult to explain that any game of chance comes with the risk of winning,” said the adviser to the newly-rich. The couple eventually reached a compromise which saw all the win go to a deserving cause.A woman in neighbouring Norway also became desperately unhappy when she found out that she had won 4.2 million krone. It seems a gentleman courting her favours had entered the numbers in her name.After tough negotiations through lawyers, the woman finally agreed to divide the winnings with the man. He had to promise though never to send her flowers, call her up on the telephone – and most important of all, never to play the lottery on her behalf.
