A deaf South African cleaner and his family who won 91 million rand (US$11.82 million) in a lottery have fled their home after hordes of relatives, friends and strangers besieged them to ask for money.
South African media reported that 52-year-old Cape Town hardware store cleaner Stanley Philander and his family disappeared from their wooden shack after their win attracted scores of people.
Philander and his wife Diana — who is also deaf — told a Cape Town tabloid newspaper that they had been inundated with requests for money since news got out that their ticket matched Friday night’s winning numbers and then disappeared, South Africa’s Daily Star newspaper reported.
The Star and other news outlets quoted Diana Philander’s sister, Wilma Vlok, as saying that after news of Philander’s win spread on Friday night, “family members and people that I don’t even know” came to her home in the Parkwood suburb of Cape Town.
Sometime on Sunday people, who Vlok believed were from the National Lottery, took Philander, his wife and their children to an undisclosed location, the Star reported. Vlok was not at home when the Philanders left, so she was not sure where they were or when they would be back.
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