GREENSBORO, N.C. — It's been one week since Governor Cooper announced the first winners of the North Carolina Vaccine Lottery. The scholarship winner was a 14-year-old from Wilmington and the millionaire winner was Shelly from Winston-Salem.
The next drawing is Wednesday, July 7. Winners will be contacted by phone and email. Keep in mind:
NC DHHS will never ask you for personal information over the phone.
Any info will be handed over in person at the lottery offices in Raleigh.
NC DHHS will never ask you to pay a fee to get your winnings.
Seriously, if you get a call and it's questionable to you, email me, call me. We'll walk through it together. The first winners called me!
“We thought this is not real. This is a scam,” said Shelly.
“At one point it was getting serious and I said, call Tanya, she'll know,” said Bill, Shelly’s husband.
2WTK doesn’t want you to miss out on a prize, but we also don't want you to get taken by a scammer.
And here's another thing to keep in mind. The lottery winnings are subject to taxes and certain debts. I asked the spokesperson for the North Carolina Education Lottery about it.
“When you win a lotto prize, there is withholding for taxes, and if you owe any debts to state or local governments then that would be collected from your prize money. You would get the net after the withholding and any debts to state or local governments,” said Van Denton.
The NC Education Lottery office is helping NC DHHS by running the numbers assigned to people to get the winner.