Jamaican Man Wears ‘Scream’ Mask to Hide Identity After Winning Lottery

Jamaican Man Wears ‘Scream’ Mask to Hide Identity After Winning Lottery
A customer purchases Powerball lottery tickets at a convenience store in Washington on Nov. 26, 2012. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Jack Phillips
2/12/2019
Updated:
2/12/2019

A Jamaican man who won the country’s lottery wore a “Scream” mask to hide his identity in published photos.

The man won $1.17 million (158 million in Jamaican dollars), according to the St. Lucia News.

He was identified only as A. Cambell, winning the lottery nearly two months ago.

Cambell said he was sick and didn’t claim the prize until now.

He said, “I looked at my ticket and ran into my bathroom and said, ‘I won! I won!’ From the day I found out that I won, I’ve been sick.”

“My head hurt me for three days because I was thinking so much. [Wondering] if what I’ve been longing for really come true. I had a belly ache for two weeks, sometimes I feel so much pain I forgot that I had won,” he added.

Campbell said his life was hard, but he noted that it will change after winning.

He said, “I want to get a house, I want to get a nice house. I haven’t found it yet, but I'll be looking for one soon.”

The man purchased the winning ticket at a location in Kingston, the country’s capital.

Reports have indicated that he wore the “Scream” mask to exploit a loophole in rules about winning a big lottery jackpot.

Previous lottery winners in Jamaica have worn animal masks or emoji masks.

The emoji mask-wearing winner, identified only as N. Gray, won $180 million Jamaican dollars and wore the mask “in response to rampant crime in the country,” Sky News reported.

Simone Clarke-Cooper, a lottery organizer, said that prior winners have used disguises for protection.

“Unfortunately, Jamaica is not like other markets,” she said.

“In other markets, they don’t necessarily do it, but here I think they opt to do it to keep themselves safe,” she said, adding that officials “are not going to tell them not to do that because their safety is of paramount importance to us as well.”

She noted: “People have been coming with their own disguises.”

“They usually don’t need our help, and they are usually very creative, perhaps beyond anything that we could think of or imagine, and it has been very effective over the years,” she continued.

Gray said she wants to invest in the community.

“I am elated, because I was drowning in debt,” she said in 2018.

She added: “I started buying Super Lotto in January... Now I’ve won, I want to clear my debt, invest, and I want to do some traveling. I would like to construct a community center for the youths in my community, so they can engage in something productive—somewhere where they can do information technology.”

Wes Craven’s “Scream” is one of the most successful horror film franchises in history after the first movie was released in 1996. The “Scream” mask is also known as the “Ghostface” mask.

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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