Widow Wrests Jackpot From Store Owner

A 72-year-old widow has been declared the winner of a $21-million lottery prize, even though the winning ticket was in the possession of a store owner who insists he was the one who bought it.

“I think that’s just wonderful,” the winner, Paraskeve Kantges, a church volunteer, said of Wednesday’s decision by state Treasurer Joe Malone. She called the store owner’s story “Greek mythology.”

She said that she harbors no ill will toward owner Nick Havan but that she would no longer phone in her daily bet, which is allowed in Massachusetts.

Malone said the decision to reject Havan’s claim and award the prize to Kantges will still face a formal hearing, meaning she has to wait to collect any money.

Kantges says she phoned in her lucky numbers to the nearby store because a snowstorm prevented her from going out.

The flap arose when the numbers 4-6-10-16-19-25 were drawn in the Mass Millions lottery Feb. 5.

Kantges had evidence that she had been playing the number for years and said it signifies her birth at 4 a.m. on the sixth day of the week on Oct. 16, 1925.

She says she called in the number the day of the drawing to Coolidge Provisions. When she hit, she went to pick up the winner and the other $1 tickets she phoned in. Havan gave her receipts of the 95 tickets she bought that week, but the winning ticket was missing, she said.

Havan initially told state lottery officials that someone else bought the winner, then acknowledged that he took the telephone bets from Kantges, officials said.

But he said when Kantges called back to confirm the transaction, she said she did not want to play her birthday number because she had played it earlier that day.

Since the bet could not be reversed, Havan said he absorbed the loss and paid for the ticket himself.

Malone said Havan was “lying shamelessly and trying to manipulate the system to his benefit.”

Havan has denied any wrongdoing. Lottery officials have suspended his license to sell lottery tickets. They also froze payment on the $25,000 commission check the store would have gotten for selling the winning ticket.