Winning Ticket Brings a Bundle of Misery

Winning $50,000 in the California State Lottery sounds like the break of a lifetime, but so far it has brought Emil Nicholas only sadness, frustration and anger, because he mailed his ticket in the wrong envelope.

After a two-month struggle to collect $50,000 that he says the state lottery owes him, Nicholas, a trim, gray-haired man in a white knit shirt and crisply pressed gray pants, finally got good news this week. Lottery officials announced that they will recommend that the state pay his claim.

But the development has left the 55-year-old Northridge resident bitter, not euphoric.

Even if the lottery pays him the $50,000, Nicholas will end up giving one-third of the money to the lawyer he hired on a contingency basis to help him press his claim, he said.

“That’s great. Why couldn’t they do that before I got the lawyer?” Nicholas asked angrily, when told by a reporter that lottery officials are recommending that he be paid. “That did not have to take two to three months.”

Nicholas said he could not even get lottery officials to answer his phone calls until he enlisted the help of Encino attorney Robert D. Rentzer, who filed a claim with the state June 6 seeking the $50,000, plus interest.

Rentzer said he considers the news a victory, adding: “It’s gratifying to know that, on occasion, the bureaucracy really does consider the little man.”

Ticket Probably Buried

Nicholas, an interior designer, accidentally had sent his “instant winner” ticket in an envelope earmarked for the weekly lottery “Big Spin” drawing, lottery officials say. As a result, the ticket is now probably buried in a landfill along with hundreds of thousands of other losing Big Spin entries that the lottery receives, lottery spokesman Robert Taylor said.

An estimated 75,000 Big Spin ticket entries are mailed to lottery offices each week; fewer than a dozen winners are drawn during that time, officials said.

Until last week, lottery officials had insisted that Nicholas could not collect the $50,000 without the ticket, even though he has photocopies of the ticket, witnesses who saw him purchase it and serial numbers to bolster his claim.

“Without a winning ticket, payment is not legally possible,” Linda Shill, a supervisor in the lottery’s prize validation office, wrote in a June 16 letter to Nicholas. The letter went on to express hope that Nicholas “will continue to play the lottery.”

A subsequent investigation by lottery security officers, however, led Taylor to say: “I think the evidence was pretty strong that this was a winner.”

Using lottery computers, officials found proof of a winning $50,000 lottery ticket with the serial numbers that Nicholas cited, Taylor said. In addition, Nicholas had purchased and kept a second, but losing, lottery ticket with consecutive serial numbers to the $50,000 winner, Taylor said.

The evidence and recommendation will be presented next week to the state Board of Control, a three-member panel that adjudicates claims filed against all state agencies, he said, adding that lottery officials will ask that the case be expedited.

The board could decide on the recommendation within 30 days, said Joe Radding, the board’s deputy executive officer. In the past, he said, the board has ruled in favor of paying off on lost lottery tickets if lottery officials recommend it.

Taylor said state law requires a board determination before winnings can be paid on lost lottery tickets. There have been other cases similar to Nicholas’ but never one with so much money at stake, he said.

First Ticket a Dud

Nicholas’ saga began April 29, he said, when he went with a friend to grab a sandwich at Marv’s Deli near his small North Hollywood interior design shop. As was his habit, he bought two lottery tickets. The first was a dud. The second was a $50,000 winner, Nicholas said.

“I was shocked. I was flabbergasted,” he recalled. He said delicatessen owner Herman Balkin gave him a claim form and an envelope for the Big Spin, which Balkin denies.

“He was the most stupid guy in the United States,” Balkin said Thursday, laughing. “I didn’t give him the wrong envelope. I told him to go to Sylmar to the lottery office. He wouldn’t drive 15 minutes for $50,000,” he said. Balkin, like Nicholas, is a Russian immigrant.

Balkin said he used to chat in Russian with Nicholas, a regular customer. The two men, however, are no longer friends because of the dispute.

Although there is a special envelope for Big Spin tickets, there is none for instant winner tickets. Brochures placed in stores that sell lottery tickets--and fine print on the tickets themselves--give a post office box number where the ticket can be redeemed.

Nicholas said that the fine print was too small to read and that he didn’t see any brochures. After he discovered his luck, he took the envelope and his winning ticket and showed it to his employees and business partner. He then went to a nearby print shop to photocopy the ticket.

Nicholas was so excited, he couldn’t figure out how to work the machine, recalled Sheri Hanes, assistant manager of Emco Printing. “He said, ‘I won $50,000.’ He was all flabbergasted. He couldn’t even talk. He was saying, ‘Oh my God, I don’t believe it. Oh my God,’ ” Hanes said.

‘He’s Not Lying’

“I just hope they do him right. He had the ticket, and he’s not lying about it,” she said.

To be on the safe side, Nicholas said, he called lottery officials and was told to mail the ticket in the envelope provided by the merchant who sold it to him. With visions of home renovations and a new car in his head, Nicholas sent the winning ticket to Sacramento.

Three weeks later, Nicholas learned of his error when he called a toll-free lottery number in Sacramento to ask when he could expect to receive his winnings.

“My heart went all the way down not to my toes, past my toes,” said Nicholas. “I volunteered to come to Sacramento and personally sort through envelopes,” Nicholas said. The offer was rebuffed.

After dozens of anxious calls to lottery officials, most of which went unanswered, Nicholas said, he hired Rentzer. Rentzer contended that the delicatessen owner was a state agent, making the state liable for the error that Balkin allegedly made by giving Nicholas the wrong envelope.

Lottery officials said they have no count on the number of people who have mistakenly mailed winning instant winner tickets to the Big Spin. Taylor said there is no plan to change the system.

Nicholas, who is divorced and has a 27-year-old daughter, said he defected from Russia while serving in the Soviet Army in Vienna. He said he was orphaned at an early age, and spoke vaguely and briefly of hardships. He preferred to talk, he said, “of happier things.”

After living in Europe, Nicholas moved to the United States and settled in Los Angeles 27 years ago, “working two to three jobs at one shot just to make payments.”

He said he worked briefly in the drapery business for no salary to acquire business acumen, then studied interior decorating at night at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. By day, he worked in factories, making gold and silver jewelry and buckles before opening his own drapery business 25 years ago in partnership with a customer. The partnership is still in effect.

“I struggled, struggled, struggled until I went on my own. When I started, I worked from my house. I worked day and night seven days a week,” Nicholas said. “Nobody gave me anything for nothing. I didn’t have a rich father-in-law or uncle or cousin, nobody,” he said.

The lottery was the first thing Nicholas ever won, he said, and he was ecstatic about the sudden windfall. But, he said, the struggle to collect the money has embittered him and worsened an ulcer he has had for 10 years.

“If there was many people like the California lottery, everybody would have ulcers,” Nicholas said. “Right now, I’m so mad at those people that you can’t believe it.

“Every time I hear the lottery advertising, I laugh. I think that anybody that plays is a fool. The odds are so stacked against you. If you’re lucky enough to win, if you’re one in a million, it’s so hard to collect, it’s ridiculous,” he said bitterly.