New York Post)- It’s goodbye, Staten Island, aloha, Hawaii, for this $245.6 million Powerball winner.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii,” newly minted multimillionaire Nandlall Mangal said Thursday. But other than that, he has no plans. “I’m sure my life is gonna change a lot,” he told reporters.
“It’s a lot of money,” Mangal said. “I have no idea what’s going to happen,” aside from that trip to the tropics.
Mangal, 42, bought a $6 Quick Pick ticket on Aug. 11 while picking up groceries at the Stop & Shop supermarket on Hylan Boulevard.
The Guyanese immigrant, a carpenter who lives with his wife in a humble ranch home in New Dorp, remembers putting away his groceries and tossing aside the ticket.
He didn’t learn he was filthy rich for days, after he heard no one had claimed the winnings and he figured he should look at his ticket before throwing it out.
“The ticket sat on my kitchen table for a week because I was out of town,” on vacation in Ocean City, Md., he said.
“I really don’t check the ticket that often,” Mangal said of the few times he has bought one, generally when the jackpot goes north of $100 million.
“Who’s going to think they won the lotto?”
The lump-sum payout, which Mangal is assigning to a trust he named “Sea & Sand,” totals $99,321,975 after withholdings.
“I like sea and sand,” he explained.
Next-door neighbour Alex Zub, 20, told The Post that Mangal and his wife live alone in their three-bedroom home.
They don’t have kids, and occasionally invite family over for backyard parties.
“He’s quiet, he’s straightforward in his speech,” said the neighbour, remembering one instance when Mangal came to him with a complaint about loud music.
“Even when he’s angry, he’s still trying to be nice.”
Mangal hasn’t quit his job — “I like working,” he says — and hadn’t even told his co-workers of his good fortune. “They’re finding out right now,” he told the press.
“Sorry, guys, I apologize.”
His wider family, too, learned about it only on Thursday — and he has a warning for any long-lost relatives who might come out of the woodwork.
“If I didn’t know them two weeks ago,” he quipped, “I don’t know them today.”
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