{"id":447,"date":"2004-01-08T13:36:29","date_gmt":"2004-01-08T18:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/01\/lost_ticket_hoax\/"},"modified":"2004-01-08T13:36:29","modified_gmt":"2004-01-08T18:36:29","slug":"lost_ticket_hoax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/lost_ticket_hoax\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost Ticket Hoax"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;cid=519&#038;ncid=757&#038;e=10&#038;u=\/ap\/20040108\/ap_on_re_us\/mega_millions_winner\">This<\/a> is shocking:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A woman admitted through tears Thursday that she lied about losing the winning ticket for a $162 million lottery prize, saying: &#8220;I wanted to win so badly for my kids and my family.&#8221;<br \/>\nElecia Battle, 40, is dropping her lawsuit to block payment of the 11-state Mega Millions jackpot to the certified winner, her lawyer Sheldon Starke said.<br \/>\n&#8220;I wanted to win,&#8221; Battle said. &#8220;The numbers were so overwhelming. I did buy a ticket and I lost it. I wanted to win so bad for my kids and my family. I apologize.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Notwithstanding this woman&#8217;s criminal history, I don&#8217;t think we should be too hard on her.  If she lost a ticket, there was a 1 in 80 million chance that it <i>could<\/i> have been the winning one.  I think she was entitled to a lawsuit to prove that her ticket wasn&#8217;t the 1 in 80 million.<br \/>\nAs it turns out, I also badly want $162 million for my family, laid-off policemen, the homeless, cancer patients . . . but mainly for myself.  Where do I sign up for lost and found lottery tickets?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/lost_ticket_hoax\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Lost Ticket Hoax\"><p>This is shocking: A woman admitted through tears Thursday that she lied about losing the winning ticket for a $162 million lottery prize, saying: &#8220;I wanted to win so badly for my kids and my family.&#8221; Elecia Battle, 40, is dropping her lawsuit to block payment of the 11-state Mega Millions jackpot to the certified [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}