COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, March 7, 2006 6:00 pm
By late Wednesday afternoon, the lucky eight meat processing plant workers were officially multi-millionaires.
The winners of the record $365 million Powerball Jackpot each received about $15.5 million Wednesday when the money was wired into their personal bank accounts.
Jim Hoppe, the lawyer representing the group, said the group was excited, relieved and feeling a little strange about it.
“They were happy,” Hoppe said, “but I think the changes that go along with it probably became more real to them.
“I think the reality of it set in. It just became more real once that happened. It was like, ‘Here it is, and now I’m going to have to learn to deal with this.’”
Hoppe said the money was wired from the multi-state lottery’s Des Moines office to the Nebraska Lottery office, which then wired the money to the trust account of his law firm.
Hoppe said he felt a little strange, too, walking into the Wells Fargo bank downtown Wednesday morning and looking at the money sent to the account — $124,089,616.
“The numbers were going way too far across the page,” he said, chuckling. “It was just such a big number that it looked strange to me, too many digits.”
He said he joked with a woman working at Wells Fargo that “the eagle has landed.”
He talked to seven of the winners Wednesday, telling them when he was going to the bank and when the money would arrive in their banks. In the afternoon, he said, he met with several of them in person and accompanied winner Dung Tran and some of his family members to Tran’s bank to help with the transfer.
Tran was the one of the lucky eight who had bought the winning ticket for his lottery pool on Feb. 17, walking into a local U-Stop convenience store wearing a red Husker ball cap. The eight worked at the ConAgra (Cook’s) ham-processing plant in west Lincoln.
Three of them are still working at the plant, Hoppe said, though he didn’t say which three.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.