A 33-year-old Idaho man who won a $220.3 million Powerball lottery jackpot May 28 said he wants to meet the heavy-metal music group Metallica.
Brad Duke came out of hiding this morning, saying he plans to use the money to build a $1 billion portfolio within 15 years.
“What better opportunity to have than me at my age with this money to build a billion-dollar empire to take care of my family and to give opportunities to the people who have given me opportunities,” Brad Duke, a regional fitness director for a chain of health clubs, told The Associated Press in an interview.
Duke, an unmarried former Boise State University pole-vaulter whose garage contains five mountain bikes, chose to take a one-time lump sum payment of $125.3 million, rather than the 30 annual installments of $7.4 million. That works out to approximately $85 million after taxes.
Idaho Lottery Commission officials had denied his request to remain anonymous, arguing that state law and the integrity of the lottery required that his name be made public to show he had no ties to lottery employees or vendors.
His jackpot is the second-largest single-ticket win in the history of Powerball, a Des Moines, Iowa-based lottery played in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. He bought the winning ticket May 28 at a Boise convenience store using a series of numbers he had played periodically the past four years.
But Duke didn’t realize he won until Memorial Day.
“After I spent what seemed like an hour staring at that screen from one centimeter away, I figured I better go to the lottery commission office,” he said. “But my vehicle was out of gas.”
At a nearby gas station, he asked a clerk to run his lottery ticket through a vending machine to verify it. When the clerk began screaming and dancing when the ticket was validated as a winner, Duke grabbed the ticket and quickly drove to Idaho Lottery Commission headquarters.
“So there I was, standing on the steps with a ticket in my hand worth $220 million, and they were closed because it was Memorial Day,” he said. “Then it dawned on me that I may not have paid for my gas.”
