A Chinese man who hid a 10 million Chinese yuan (US$1.5 million) lottery prize from his wife for two years has been ordered by a court to pay her damages.
The aforementioned Chinese national, whose surname is only revealed as Zhou, won a 10 yuan lottery ticket in 2021.
After paying mandatory government taxes, he was left with 8.43 million yuan, which is equivalent to 1.23 million US dollars, which was enough to bring prosperity to his and his family’s lives. Instead of telling the news of happiness and surprise to his wife, he kept it hidden and pretended that nothing had changed.
On the day the prize money was transferred to his bank account, Mr. Zhou transferred 2 million yuan of it to his sister and another 700,000 yuan to his ex-wife’s account.
It is not clear how his wife found out about the whole affair, but as soon as she got the news, she filed for divorce and sued that her husband had hid the prize money from her.
According to Chinese law, because the two were married when the prize money was awarded, the money is considered joint property. but Zhou hid this from her, so the court ordered 60 percent of the money to go to his wife.
After the incident went viral on Chinese social media, people made negative comments about Mr. Zhou.