Father sues daughter for lottery winnings.

A 53-year-old father in Long An province, who won a lottery jackpot of over 4.5 billion VND, is now suing his children to reclaim the money after they redeemed it and divided it among themselves.

A 53-year-old man, small in stature, his clothes faded, his face gaunt and sorrowful, sat huddled in a small, one-story house in Tan Thanh town. He is Pham Van Dong, the man who won the 4.6 billion dong lottery jackpot while cutting bananas, causing a sensation in his poor hometown in May 2016.

Mr. Dong, originally from Dong Thap Muoi, lived with his wife and had four children, but they divorced more than 10 years ago. The first three children live with their mother. He and his youngest son live separately, and due to extreme poverty, the government built them a charity house. Every day, he picks vegetables and cuts bananas to sell to make a living.

"That morning, we ran out of rice at home, so I rode my bike to cut down banana trees to sell, earning 50,000 dong. I was so thirsty that I went into a shop and ordered a drink, which cost 10,000 dong. I saw a lottery ticket vendor at the next table offering tickets, but he was scolded by a customer and had four tickets thrown to the ground. I felt sorry for him and bought some to help him out," Mr. Dong recalled.

Mr. Pham Van Dong: "If I could turn back time, I wish I hadn't won the lottery." Photo: Hoang Nam.

That afternoon, after learning he had won the lottery, he was overjoyed, but didn't know how to claim his prize, so he took it to his younger brother for help. Along the way, he met his son-in-law, who asked him to show it to him and then kept it, refusing to return it, and took it home to give to his wife.

This couple, along with Mr. Dong's other daughter, later exchanged the winning lottery ticket and divided the money among the four siblings, relatives, and used it to buy houses, land, gold, cars, etc. The remaining one billion dong was deposited in the bank under the name of Mr. Dong's 28-year-old daughter.

"After exchanging tickets, my children bought me a small house with furniture. Initially, they provided me with money each month, but gradually they abandoned me. When I asked for six million dong a month to help me care for my youngest son who suffers from dementia, they refused. They bought a car, but when I'm sick, they'd rather drive passengers than take me to the hospital," he said sadly.

Meanwhile, the daughter, who held the one billion dong, claimed the fault lay with Mr. Dong. "It was because Dad listened to others who instigated him to sue, but my siblings and I still cared for him; we didn't abandon him as he claims. We didn't provide much money because we were afraid he would gamble it all away," she explained.

At the end of August, the Tan Thanh District People's Court (Long An province) held a preliminary hearing in a case demanding the return of lottery winnings between the plaintiff, Mr. Dong, and the defendant, his second daughter.

On the day of the trial, Mr. Dong authorized someone else to attend on his behalf, then returned to his old house to light incense and wait for the outcome. He said he was angry but couldn't bear to see his son in court as the defendant.

In court, the daughter admitted to keeping her father's lottery winnings, but refused to return them because Mr. Dong had given them to her. She had deposited the remaining one billion dong into a one-year savings account with a prize draw, but she was not allowed to withdraw it before the deadline. Because she needed money, she mortgaged the savings passbook and borrowed one billion dong from the bank.

The bank (participating in the proceedings as a party with related rights and obligations) also requested that the customer repay the one billion dong loan along with nearly 50 million dong in interest. The bank also requested the court to revoke the decision to freeze the savings account so that they could recover the customer's loan.

The court determined that the daughter could not prove that Mr. Dong gave or gifted her the lottery winnings, and therefore ordered the defendant to return one billion dong to her father. In addition, the court also accepted all of the bank's claims.

Mr. Dong appealed, arguing that the verdict favored the bank, and that he would have difficulty recovering the money from his daughter. "My daughter deliberately used deceptive tactics to transfer assets before the court's freezing order was issued," he stated.

After the trial, Mr. Dong's house and his daughter's house were only a little over a kilometer apart, but father and daughter rarely visited each other. Besides the small, one-story house bought with lottery winnings, a wooden sofa set, and a few other simple pieces of furniture, looking at the small, dark-skinned man with sad eyes sitting for hours on the porch, few would guess that just a few months earlier he had been a billionaire.

Every day, he still returns to his small house with a garden to cut vegetables and chop bananas to buy rice, fish sauce, and salt, just like in the old days, since his children stopped providing for him.

"If I could turn back time, I wish I had never won the lottery. Money can fracture and destroy human relationships. It would have been better to live happily in poverty like before," Mr. Dong said bitterly.

According to VNE