LOTTO billionaire Edwin Castro has made mistakes following his stunning Powerball win, a lottery lawyer has claimed.
Castro, who said he owns the ticket that scooped an incredible $2.04billion in February, has been sucked into a bitter legal battle over who actually purchased the winning numbers last November.
3
3
But that hasn't stopped the Los Angeles based 30-year-old from splashing out on a $25million pad in the Hollywood Hills and cruising around in a flashy sports car.
Lotto lawyer Kurt Panouses, however, cannot believe how Castro is acting following the amazing windfall and has been blown away by the number of red flags raised by his behavior.
Panouses has been helping big-ticket winners for the past decade and knows exactly how to manage their newfound profile and fame to ensure their money is invested and spent sensibly.
He believes Castro has made wrong moves from the very start by failing to immediately take himself out of the limelight and let specialist attorneys deal with the life-changing jackpot.
"There's no way that this kid in California should have been buying a mansion for anyone to even find out who he was," Florida-based Panouses told The U.S. Sun.
"That should have been set up through a land trust to purchase it so that no one knows who the buyer is. It should have been set up with some privacy for this kid.
"It's just embarrassing if he had legal counsel that didn't help him with that, or either that or he is a loose cannon and he's going to be his own undoing."
Panouses cringes at the way Castro has been flaunting his newfound wealth and attracting far too much attention.
Most read in Money
"I think he needs to reign in his life and be a little bit more private and thoughtful as to what he's doing and how he's doing it," he added. "Because there's gonna be people that are gonna be looking for him."
One major mistake Castro made, according to Panouses, was identifying himself as the winner straight off the bat.
The California lottery allows groups to come forward with a potential win so Castro could have given his go-ahead for an attorney to appear as the front, leaving the actual winners out of the blaring spotlight.
After pocketing such a significant amount, some crucial early steps - including hiring the best legal counsel possible - need to be taken to ensure everyone can benefit for years to come.
Jackpot winners aren't automatically given lawyers to work with, they have to be sought out.
"This is the biggest financial decision of your life," stressed Panouses.
"It's like the Super Bowl, so you want to make sure you have Tom Brady at quarterback rather than just anyone in the game. You need quality and experience."
As the legal battle over who indeed actually purchased the winning ticket rages on, Panouses can see a familiar theme brewing.
"There's been several cases where people said they were involved in a group with and then for one reason or another, got left out.
"They claimed that they should have been in, but no one offered it to them or they were in two weeks earlier and now they were out because someone forgot to take their money or list them.
"All those cases ended up being tied up in the courts for about three to four years and they had multiple attorneys who were taking the case on a percentage basis."
A fear of how to proceed could also put a spanner in the works and lead to people being taken advantage of.
Regulations state that you don't need to be a California resident to play the state lottery, yet potential winners who may not be U.S. nationals and don't have great command of English could become paranoid and unsure of next steps.
"I get a lot of calls from people worried they may have their money taken from them, " concluded Panouses.
Read More on The US Sun
"They worry about being deported and start to panic. So they start talking to someone who says, 'Oh, I know how to do this. Give me the ticket, I'll leave it for you.' And then the person runs away with it.
"This case really concerns me."
3
