And the latest lotto winner is…

A winning lottery ticket that was purchased in Des Moines in December 2010 is now at the center of a criminal investigation in Iowa, USA and it has ties to Belize. The back story is that the winner of the sixteen point five million dollar jackpot didn’t surface until December 2011, just two hours before the ticket would have expired. And if that isn’t strange enough, late last month, the Hot Lotto Company received a letter, saying that the proceeds would be donated to charity but the actual winner could not be identified. The correspondence was sent by Attorney Crawford Shaw, representing Hexham Investment Trust, a corporation registered in Belize. Shaw could not provide the name, address or any other basic information about the winner and eventually withdrew the claim, which means that some unknown person passed up millions of dollars to conceal their identity. The mysterious move raised red flags and an investigation was immediately launched, but US officials have so far been unable to find any information about the trust, its members or the person who actually purchased the ticket. We did our own internet search on Hexham Investment Trust, but all that turned up were news articles relating to the lottery claim.