How on Earth Did an Iraqi Manage to Win a US Lottery?

One man’s amazing road to wealth… In the spring of 2015 M. opened an online lottery account from his home in Iraq – three months on he’d won a lottery jackpot of $6.4 million in the US! Loads of people all over the world are now following into the footsteps of the famous man from Baghdad and have started playing international top lotteries like the upcoming $377 million US Mega Millions online!

— Note: since M. from Iraq won his US jackpot, a Canadian customer, an Australian and a man from El Salvador have each won $1 million in the US Powerball by ordering their tickets online. You can read all their stories here. On top of that, and most recently, in August 2017, one of our customers from Panama won $30 million in the Florida Lotto. —

M. had only started playing lotteries in the US and Europe through theLotter three months before he won. “It was a shock. At first, I thought it was a joke. I was driving in my car, I was going to the bank… so I get a call from theLotter, from a great person called Christine, and she told me the great news, so I was in shock! I suspected I’d won something, but had no idea it was the jackpot.”

Jackpot Winner Fears for his Life, Pleads for his Name Not to Be Revealed

After careful preparation in the autumn, M. flew to Oregon to claim his millions in December. He requested that theLotter and the Oregon lottery keep his name confidential because of safety concerns. “The situation in Iraq is not good. It’s very dangerous. If my name were revealed, it would be a big problem.”

Oregon Lottery director Jack Roberts agreed to the unusual request. “The personal safety risk that he and his family might face seems stronger than the public interest of knowing who the person is,” Roberts told local media. “I don’t want to read that somebody has been kidnapped or killed because we announce them as a Megabucks winner.”

So how did he do it? How did M. participate in a US lottery from Iraq?

M. played US lotteries online through theLotter, a worldwide messenger service that was established in 2002. Through theLotter people can request somebody to physically purchase lottery tickets on their behalf, even when they are outside of the country or state where the lottery takes place. theLotter doesn’t operate lotteries, but its local reps in more than 20 countries across the world purchase official paper tickets and make a scanned copy available to online players’ secure personal accounts. theLotter enables people to play the Mega Millions, play the US Powerball and play the EuroMillions lotteries and a host of other draws from anywhere in the world.

I. Nelson Rose, the eminent professor of law at the Whittier Law School in California, said in the New York Times article about the Iraqi lottery winner that theLotter’s method of providing official lottery tickets to online participants is “100 percent legal”. The Oregon Lottery officials confirmed it: their exact words were that “the system is ingenious”. The method is allowed, because theLotter’s clients do not actually play online… They merely request that the service’s reps physically go out to buy official paper tickets on their behalf.

M.’s future, and the future of his children, looks bright. Whilst he had a hard time believing it was real when he first signed up in the spring, after his win he said that “theLotter was trustworthy and the real deal as everyone on staff was so helpful in getting the prize claimed”.

Asked if he was going to continue to buy lottery tickets: “I’m going to continue to play every day!”