Dispute Over $5M Lottery Win By Australian Neighbors Resolved in Court 

A case involving three Australian seniors and a disputed AU$5 million lottery win has been resolved this week in court.

Sydney local housing authority residents Alan Way, 70, Mark Peter Bowling, 76, and Moya Posa, 89, were embroiled in a two-year legal dispute over the August 2022 lottery win. 

Way claimed that he was part of the syndicate that claimed the $5 million win. But Bowling and Posa said that he had left the group nearly a year before the fortunate jackpot hit occurred. 

Late last week, Justice James Hmelnitsky ruled in favor of Bowling and Posa. The judge said that Way’s evidence, in the form of diary entries made each month marking down his $20 input into the syndicate, had been fabricated after the win. 

The Prize

Bowling purchased the Australian Lottery ticket on August 8, 2022, and claimed the $5 million jackpot win days later. He registered himself and Posa as contributors to the syndicate and they split the win between them.

Despite Way leaving a year earlier, bank records showed that in October 2022 Bowling transferred him $200,000 as a conciliatory gesture. But he did not reveal how much was actually won on the ticket. 

Way then asked around mutual friends of the pair, some of whom had also received substantial gifts, and discovered the true winning sum. He then confronted Bowling at the housing complex they both lived in, but was denied any more money. 

The court heard an “aggressive altercation” occurred, before Bowling and Posa moved away from the housing block weeks later. Way then launched legal proceedings against the pair. 

The Ruling 

The court heard that Way left the syndicate and stopped contributing to tickets after a September 2021 argument at the apartment block in the Sydney suburb of Elderslie. 

Bowling and Posa were unhappy with Way after he hosted a raucous party at his apartment during Covid restrictions. The party led to a fallout which eventually resulted in Way leaving the syndicate. Way disputed that account, and said that he continued putting into the syndicate until the August 2022 win. He produced diary evidence to back up his claim, in which he had noted the $20 transaction each month.

However, the judge in the case determined that these diary entries had been falsified after the win. Therefore, he could not rule that Way contributed to purchasing the winning ticket. 

“I am persuaded to a relatively high level of certainty that those entries were not made contemporaneously,” Hmelnitsky told the court, as reported by Australia’s News.com.au. 

“That being so, I am unable to accept Mr Way’s evidence that he contributed to the purchase of the winning ticket.”

If you thought a $5 million lottery dispute between former friends and neighbors was a high stakes story, try reading about this $1.3 billion lottery winner from Maine.

The unnamed winner is suing his ex-partner and mother of their child, claiming she broke a nondisclosure agreement in revealing news of the big win to friends and family. 

However, his ex-partner this year filed her own counterclaim in court. She says the winner refused to give his own mother and father any of the money, and used his winnings to hire a security detail to track her and their daughter.