Monday November 19, 2007

A former beauty queen is suing her husband amid claims he won the lottery and kept it a secret.

Donna Campbell says airline-mechanic Arnim Ramdass scooped 300,000 pounds in a work syndicate and then tried to cover up his winnings. She is now suing for the share of the fortune she believes is rightfully hers – but must hunt him down first.

The couple, from Florida, have been married for two years.

Campbell says after the syndicate at Miami International Airport scooped 5 million pounds, she noticed her husband started turning off the TV frequently and even disconnected their phone line. She became suspicious and realised he was keeping a secret. The penny dropped when Campbell found a postcard in the mail congratulating her husband on buying a new home.

The 47-year-old – a former skin-cream model and Trinidad and Tobago beauty pageant runner-up – knew he had been playing the lottery for years and used the internet to search for clues. In just a few clicks of the mouse, she hit on the truth. She confronted the 51-year-old and he fled.

Campbell has now hired a lawyer, Bruce Baldwin, who said: “Here’s a guy who for years has spent marital money on the lottery and at casinos, and he’s always lost.

“And now he finally wins, and he’s trying to keep it from his wife. That’s pretty low.”

Since the pair met, in 2000, Ramdass and his fellow mechanics have been playing the Florida lottery. They have pooled their money each Wednesday for the twice-weekly draws. They opt for lucky dips and this month one of their tickets came up trumps matching six numbers  – 6, 31, 34, 44, 45 and 49 – and netting 5 million pounds.

“After it happened he started keeping the TVs off and disconnected the phone line,” Campbell said. “He obviously didn’t want anyone calling and talking about the lottery. “After I saw the postcard in the mail, I said ‘do you have news you want to share with me?’

“But he said ‘no, what are you talking about?’ “I said ‘the lottery’.”

Ramdass claimed he had bought the ticket for this daughter Janelle, from another marriage, who lives in Orlando. But Campbell was not convinced.

“He had been buying those tickets for years and he never, ever said one of them was for her,” she said.

Following the confrontation, Ramdass packed his bags and left. He has taken leave from work and not returned to the couple’s Miramar home. His wife is now searching for him in an attempt to hand him the legal papers and says she need the cash to help pay bills and support herself.

“Right now, all I want is justice,” she said. “With time, I will file for divorce.”

The legal wrangle comes after a similar case, also in Florida, involving a 1995 lottery jackpot of 14 million pounds. The saga is still continuing and involves Bernice Heslop who scooped the hefty sum but hid it from her estranged husband and divorced him before cashing in the winning ticket.

Her ex-husband Ernest Moore Jr found out after overhearing a conversation in a bar and sued her for a cut of the money. As part of the deal, he agreed to split his share with the bar punter Marvel Rodriguez – but then got taken to court himself for not paying up.

Baldwin is representing Rodriguez in that case.