. . . and a Shadowy Web of Intrigue for 3 Others

The case filed last week in San Luis Obispo Superior Court has all the elements of a 1950s film noir mystery.

The characters: the scheming husband, the trusting wife, the other woman.

The story: The husband, Ray Valois, buys a lottery ticket, scratches it and finds three “Spin, Spin, Spin” symbols. He is eligible to win up to $2 million, but he does not want to tell his wife, Monica, according to his statement in court records. So he gives the ticket to another woman, waitress Stephanie Martin. She agrees to cash in the ticket, according to court records, and secretly give him half.

Wife Sues

The inevitable plot twist: Valois and Martin turn on each other. He claims that he owns the ticket. She claims that she owns the ticket.

The conclusion: Martin spins and wins $100,000. But the wife finds out and sues both of them for fraud.

Now neither Martin nor Valois have the $100,000. His wife’s attorney, Gary Dunlap, obtained a temporary restraining order, restricting lottery officials from awarding the winnings until a court hearing Thursday.

“The moral of the story is: ‘Greed is a terrible thing,’ ” Dunlap said. “And greed will be Stephanie Martin’s downfall. If she would have kept her part of the bargain, she would have gotten $50,000 and no one would have been the wiser.”

But Martin contended in an interview that Valois’ version of the story is false. Weeks earlier, she said, Valois, a regular customer at the restaurant where she works as a waitress, was short $2 on a bill. She loaned him the money, and he later returned with two lottery tickets to repay the debt, she said. One was the big winner.

“I resent being portrayed as some villainous, deceiving woman, like Joan Collins on (TV’s) ‘Dynasty,’ ” she said. “I don’t go out with married men. And anybody who knows me and then takes a look at him would tell you, I’d never be interested in someone like THAT,” she sniffed.

Valois contended that he purchased the “Win and Spin” lottery ticket at the Morro Bay liquor store where he works part time as a clerk. The next afternoon he met Martin at the restaurant, he said, pulled out the ticket and cut a deal with her. She agreed to pretend the ticket was hers, attend the Big Spin in Sacramento and give him half of the winnings. Valois characterized his relationship with Martin as “very good friends . . . I thought.”

‘Ray Got Suckered,’ Wife Says

Although Monica Valois named her husband in the lawsuit, they have resolved their differences, she said. She is convinced, she said, that her husband was not having an affair with Martin.

“Ray is very easily influenced and he’s been taken by people before,” Monica Valois said. “And from what I’ve heard from several people, this woman (Martin) is able to do that with men. Ray got suckered.”

She said her husband was having problems with his contracting business, and “I’d been griping at him about it.” He did not tell her about the lottery ticket, she said, because “he wanted to get the money, pretend he’d earned it and prove to me his business was doing OK.”

But about a week before the Big Spin, Ray Valois said, Martin called him and told him the deal was off. She was angry, he said, “because she said I was trying to buy her.” She offered him a flat $4,000, he said, and told him she did not intend to split the winnings.

“I called him, but just to tell him to stay away from me,” Martin said. “I heard that he was telling people he intended to romance me off my feet, take me to Hawaii and woo me out of the money. . . . This is a small town. I didn’t like him spreading those kinds of rumors. And eventually, I figured, his wife was going to hear this. I don’t need some jealous wife coming over and shooting me.”

Martin has had nine marriage proposals since it was announced that she was eligible for the Big Spin, she said, so she was not surprised by Valois’ attention. He is “just another man with a big ego,” she said, who assumed she was a vulnerable single mother and “figured if he hounded me enough, eventually I’d come around.”

After Martin’s phone call, Valois decided he needed a lawyer and told the tale to Dunlap. The attorney told Valois that he did not have a good case against Martin, because the money was community property and their agreement was fraudulent.

Valois reluctantly told his wife, and she retained Dunlap and filed the lawsuit.

Valois and his wife watched on television as Martin stepped up to take the Big Spin, where she was eligible to win between $10,000 and $2 million.

“I had a lot of mixed feelings,” Ray Valois said. “I wanted her to win the $2 million, because I knew it was my ticket. But in another sense, I was so angry, I didn’t want her to win a penny. I was kicking myself in the butt the whole time.”