Father sues daughter for lottery jackpot

A 53-year-old father in Long An won a jackpot of more than 4.5 billion VND. His children took the prize and divided it among themselves, so he sued to get it back.

A 53-year-old man, small in stature, with discolored clothes and a haggard, sad face, sat huddled in a ground-floor house in Tan Thanh town. He was Pham Van Dong, the banana logger who won the jackpot of 4.6 billion VND, causing a stir in his poor hometown in May 2016.

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

"That morning, we ran out of rice so I rode my bike to cut bananas and sold them for 50,000 VND. I was so thirsty that I went to a shop and ordered a drink for 10,000 VND. I saw a person selling lottery tickets at the next table but was scolded by the customer and threw four tickets on the ground so I felt sorry and bought them for him," 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 knowing he won the lottery, he was so happy, but did not know how to redeem the prize, so he took it to his younger brother to ask for help. On the way, he met his son-in-law, who told him to show it to him and then kept it without returning it, and brought it home to give to his wife.

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

"After exchanging the tickets, my children bought me a house with furniture. At first, they gave me money every month, but later they ignored me. When I asked for six million VND a month so I could take care of my youngest son who had dementia, they didn't give it to me. My family bought a car, but when I was sick, they would rather take passengers than take me to the hospital," he said sadly.

Meanwhile, the daughter who kept the one billion dong said it was Mr. Dong's fault. "It was because my father listened to others and sued, but my siblings and I still care for him, we did not abandon him like you said. We did not give him much money because we were afraid he would lose everything gambling," she explained.

At the end of August, Tan Thanh District People's Court (Long An) held a first-instance trial of a case of claiming back 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 in his place, then returned to his old house to burn incense and wait for the results. He said he was angry but could not bear to see his son in court as the defendant.

In court, the daughter admitted to keeping her father's lottery winnings, but because Mr. Dong gave them to her, she refused to return them. She had deposited the remaining one billion VND in savings for a one-year term, with a prize, and could not withdraw them before the due date. Because she needed money to spend, she mortgaged her savings book and borrowed one billion VND from the bank.

The bank (participating in the litigation as a party with related rights and obligations) also requested the customer to pay back one billion VND in loans and nearly 50 million VND in interest. The bank also requested the court to cancel the decision to freeze the savings book so that they could recover the customer's loan.

The court found that the daughter could not prove that Mr. Dong had given her the lottery winnings, so it ordered the defendant to return one billion VND to her father. In addition, the court also accepted all of the bank's requests.

Mr. Dong appealed, saying that the verdict favored the bank, and that it would be difficult for him to get his money back from his daughter. "My daughter deliberately used tricks to disperse assets before the court's decision to freeze them," he said.

After the trial, Mr. Dong's house and his daughter's house were only a kilometer apart, but father and daughter rarely visited each other. Apart from the bungalow bought with lottery winnings, a wooden sofa set and some shabby furniture, looking at the small, dark-skinned man with sad eyes sitting for hours on the porch, few people would have known that just a few months ago he was a billionaire.

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

"If I could turn back time, I wish I had never won the lottery. Money can cause cracks and breaks in human relationships. It would be better to live in poverty like in the past and be happy," Mr. Dong said bitterly.

According to VNE