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Community Corner

Greenwich Trio: We're the Real Powerball Winners

The three men who hit the $254 million Nov. 2 Powerball jackpot — claiming it nearly a month after purchasing the winning ticket at a BP gas station in Stamford — deny reports that they're fronting for the real winner.

The three Greenwich financial advisors who on Monday released a statement late Tuesday clarifying that they are not fronting for a client or “secret winner,” as had been reported through numerous media outlets.

"While there has been much speculation and quite a bit of misinformation over the last 24 hours, this Trust, with its three trustees, has been established to manage the winnings in the most practical and expedient way possible so that we can achieve our strategic goal of helping those who can best benefit from these funds," said public relations executive Gary Lewi, who is handling PR on behalf of the trust the three men set up upon learning that they had purchased the winning ticket for the largest Powerball jackpot in Connecticut history. "And to be clear, there are a total of three trustees and there is no anonymous fourth participant."

On Tuesday numerous media outlets reported that the three men  — Greenwich residents Gregg Skidmore, Brandon Lacoff and Tim Davidson, owners of asset management firm Belpointe LLC — who had in fact purchased the winning ticket at a BP gas station in the Shippan section of Stamford, but wanted to stay out of the media spotlight.

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Tom Gladstone, a Greenwich resident and family friend of lottery winner Brandon Lacoff, told the Daily Mail of London and other new outlets that Lacoff told him Monday that the trio did not actually purchase the ticket, but are fronting for the winner, a client who does not want his or her identity revealed. The news was also reported by the Greenwich Time, which said another business associate of Lacoff’s, who wished to remain anonymous, had also come forward making the same claim.

Making Gladstone’s claim more believable is the fact that the three men put the money into a single trust, as opposed to dividing it three ways. It would also explain why the trio referred all questions to their lawyer during the press conference held at Lottery headquarters. It may have also explained why there was a before the trio came forward to claim the prize money, which will be paid as a lump sum, after taxes and fees, of about $108 million.

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Lottery officials, however, have mostly put to rest the rumor that the three men were acting on behalf of a secret winner: In the Greenwich Time article, Consumer Protection Commissioner William Rubenstein said the lottery corporation “took the appropriate steps to assure that the payment was made to an appropriate winner.” He said there was no evidence to support the claim that someone other than the three men was the winner.

A clerk at the BP gas station in the Shippan section of Stamford said in published reports that he remembered Davidson, a regular of the store, coming in and purchasing a lottery ticket on Nov. 2.

Rubenstein confirmed that is permissible under lottery rules to have a trust be the named recipient of the prize money.

Michael Lindquist, co-owner of the BP station that sold the winning ticket, told the press that the station’s video surveillance only goes back 10 to 12 days and that the footage of Davidson buying the ticket had since been erased.

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