DOLLAR DAZE

I read “The Great Lottery Caper” (by Ajay Sahgal, Oct. 8) in hopes of finding the answer to what I consider The Great Lottery Mystery. Unfortunately, the answer was not to be found there.

Let’s say that the big Lotto prize was $10 million. Each year, the winner would get $500,000. But, invested at a low 6% interest, that $10 million would earn $600,000 a year, so the lottery commission would still have $10,100,000 after the payout. By my calculation, after 20 years of $500,000 annual payouts, the commission would end up with more than $13,000,000. The mystery is, who gets that money then?

At that rate, the lottery coffers currently must be holding hundreds of millions of dollars that will never be paid out. Perhaps we citizens should get an accounting?

Ray Uhler

Irvine