A California woman living in the country illegally claims her uncle walked off with more than $1.5 million in lottery winnings after she handed him the ticket, too afraid that collecting the prize herself would lead to her deportation.
Ruby Reyes bought a $20 scratch-off ticket at a liquor store in Santa Rosa, California, late last year. She scratched off 12 words on the card and discovered she had won a $2 million jackpot. Rather than celebrate, she faced a problem of her own making: as an illegal immigrant, she worried that stepping forward to claim the money could put her on the government's radar and get her removed from the country.
So Reyes turned to family. She handed the winning ticket to an uncle she says had legal resident paperwork, trusting him to cash it and return the money. The uncle collected the prize. The California State Lottery cut him a check for $1,520,004.08 after state taxes were deducted, records reviewed by Univision 14 show. And then, Reyes says, he kept every cent.
Reyes told Univision 14 that she messaged her uncle after he received the check, asking him to reconsider. He has not returned the winnings. His name has not been made public, and he has not responded to the allegations or made any public statement.
Reyes insists the ticket was always hers.
"I handed it over to an uncle because, supposedly, he had the (legal resident) paperwork and was going to give me the money."
She says she has filed legal action, though the type of case, civil lawsuit, police report, or something else, and the court or jurisdiction involved remain unclear. No further details about the filing have surfaced.
Reyes cast the dispute in personal terms, saying the jackpot was supposed to secure her children's future.
"It was a dream I had. I only thought about my future and that of my children. I am telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, and I have sufficient evidence to win this case."
What that evidence consists of, she did not say. The New York Post reached out to both Reyes and the California State Lottery for comment. Neither response was noted.
The central irony of Reyes's predicament is that she may not have needed her uncle at all. Illegal immigrants are not barred from purchasing lottery tickets or claiming prizes in California. Winners regardless of immigration status are subject to federal and state taxes, and the lottery deducted those taxes before issuing the check. Reyes's fear of deportation, whether justified or not, is what led her to hand a winning ticket worth $2 million to someone else and hope for the best.
That gamble, trusting another person to collect a life-changing sum and voluntarily give it back, is one she now says she lost. And her lack of legal status complicates any effort to fight for the money. Filing a lawsuit means stepping into public view, attaching her name to court records, and drawing exactly the kind of attention she tried to avoid.
Reyes is not the first illegal immigrant to lose a lottery prize this way. In 2011, Jose Antonio Cua-Toc, an illegal immigrant in Georgia, won $750,000 from a scratch-off ticket. He asked his boss, Erick Cervantes, to cash it on his behalf. When Cervantes failed to hand over the winnings, Cua-Toc was arrested for threatening to kill Cervantes, his wife, and their children.
An immigration judge ordered Cua-Toc to self-deport. But a Georgia judge ultimately granted him the jackpot prize, a ruling that came only after Cua-Toc had been arrested and faced removal proceedings. He got the money. He also got a criminal record and a deportation order.
Reyes has not been accused of any threats or criminal conduct. But the parallel is hard to miss: an illegal immigrant wins a lottery prize, cannot bring herself to claim it through official channels, enlists someone she trusts, and watches the money disappear into that person's pocket.
Several questions remain unanswered. The California State Lottery has not commented on whether it has any mechanism to resolve disputes when the person who cashes a ticket is not the person who purchased it. Reyes's uncle has said nothing publicly. The nature and status of Reyes's legal action are unknown. And the name of the Santa Rosa liquor store where she bought the ticket has not been disclosed.
The case also raises a broader policy question that state officials have shown no interest in addressing. If illegal immigrants can legally buy and claim lottery tickets, and the state happily collects taxes on their winnings, then the system invites exactly the kind of third-party arrangement Reyes entered into. People afraid of government contact will find intermediaries. Some of those intermediaries will steal the money. The state collects its tax cut either way and never has to think about the rest.
Reyes broke the law to be in this country. That fact doesn't entitle anyone to steal from her. But it does explain how she ended up handing $2 million to a relative on nothing more than a promise, and why getting it back may cost her more than the ticket was worth.
