Tayeb Souami: How to Win the Powerball With Orange Juice
Every day, people perform mundane tasks that they never think twice about—mowing the lawn, doing chores, returning an item that they no longer need to the grocery store, etc. But would you ever imagine that in doing one of these activities you could change your life forever? That’s exactly what happened to lucky New Jersey Powerball winner Tayeb Souami.
Who Is Tayeb Souami?
In 2018, Tayeb Souami was 55 years old and working as an accountant for a food importing company. A father of two, he had immigrated to the United States from an unspecified African country in 1996 and settled in the city of Little Ferry, New Jersey. Souami was an occasional lotto player, and had been buying tickets on and off for 21 years. Though much of Souami’s life seemed pretty ordinary, everything changed for him and his family on May 19th, 2018, thanks to one simple mundane task.
How Much Money Did Tayeb Souami Win?
Souami’s incredible win happened because of a small household dispute over $2.50. Souami had bought a bottle of orange juice at ShopRite for $5, but when he arrived home he learned that his wife had bought the same brand of orange juice for only $2.50 at another store. Souami’s wife insisted that $5 was too expensive for orange juice and asked him to return the pricey bottle. Upon receiving his refund, Souami noticed that the night’s Powerball draw had climbed to over $300 million. Thinking that it looked like a good amount of money and feeling lucky, Souami used the money he’d gotten from the orange juice to purchase two lottery tickets, one of which had the numbers 3, 6, 9, 17, 56, and Powerball 25.
It wasn’t until the following day that Souami learned just how good his instincts had been. While his wife was doing house work, Souami went to get his car washed and decided to get the tickets checked. He was shocked when the cashier told him that he’d won the $315.3 million jackpot. Souami had beat odds of 1 in 292.2 million to become the single-ticket winner. When claiming his prize, Souami chose the cash payout, taking home around $183 million. At the time, Souami’s win was the fourth largest jackpot win in New Jersey’s history. You can watch his endearing speech during his press conference here:
How Did Tayeb Souami Spend His Winnings?
Souami was very careful and deliberate in how he decided to spend his money. In fact, he made the very smart decision of meeting with a financial advisor and taking a few weeks to plan what he wanted to do with his windfall and how he wanted to live his life going forward. One of his first priorities was ensuring that all 200 of the people he worked with at the food importing company would be fine without him after he quit.
Next, Souami focused on taking care of his family. He planned to pay off his home, which had recently been refinanced in order to pay for his daughter’s college tuition, and stay in his home town in New Jersey. He also paid off his old, still-lingering student loans and set aside funds for his children’s tuition.
What Is the Tayeb Souami Email Scam?
Tayeb Souami has been able to maintain a very low profile since his incredible win. Unfortunately, there are many fraudsters who are happy to use his name to try to scam innocent people out of their money. Since the win in May 2018, multiple email scams have circulated using Souami’s story to convince people to give scammers their personal and financial information. Most of these lotto scams involve messages wherein the scammers falsely identify themselves as Souami, explain the lottery win, and state that the recipient is one of the lucky few who has been selected to receive a donation of Souami’s jackpot money. Most of these emails promise to give millions of dollars to the recipient in the spirit of charitable giving.
Typically, these scammers will tell any person who responds to the spam email that they need the responder’s personal information in order to send the promised money. Scammers will then use those personal details to steal the recipient’s money. In other circumstances, the scammers may tell the responder that they need to send a small amount of money to cover the wire fee before receiving their donation. Once the responder sends the money, they no longer hear from the scammers. The reality is that Tayeb Souami is not trying to give his money away to random people online, and any email saying otherwise is a scam and should be ignored or reported.
Conclusion
Tayeb Souami’s story, like those of many other lottery winners, might sound like something out of a movie, but it was a real, life-changing moment for the lucky father. By keeping a good head on his shoulders and working with a financial advisor, Souami was able to provide more stability to his family and offer his children a bright future, all thanks to the lottery and a bottle of orange juice—we only wonder if he’s happy paying full-price now that he’s a multi-millionaire.
