Mega Million Lottery Winners Get Check

High school sweethearts Richard and Mary Morrison, Long Island’s largest Lottery jackpot winners of all time, were handed a $165 million check by NY Lottery announcers Yolanda Vega and Ralph Buckley in Garden City on Thursday.

The Miller Place couple became millions richer overnight after Mary, a self-employed massage therapist, spent $5 on a Mega Millions Lottery ticket on December 21.  The next morning, she watched the winning numbers from the previous night’s drawing scroll across her TV screen.

With her husband Richard by her side, Mega Millions Winner Mary Morrison of Miller Place, N.Y. flashes the number one sign after they were presented with their ceremonial check for $165,000,00 by New York Lottery jackpot announcer Ralph Buckley and the Lottery's Yoland Vega at the New York Lottery Customer Service Center on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010, in Garden City, N.Y. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)

“I’m not a drinker,” said Mary. “But all day I drank champagne.”

Topping the Miller Place couple’s “To Do” List is planning for a lavish reception to mark the couple’s  upcoming 40th wedding anniversary. They also are paying off their mortgage, opening a restaurant, and helping the poor, as well as Richard Morrison’s pet cause of celebrating the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

“I promised my wife  whenever we could afford  to, we’d finally have an appropriate wedding,” said Richard, a self-employed psychotherapist, as he got down on one knee and asked his wife to marry him again in front of a crowd of reporters.

But authorities say the couple owes Suffolk County nearly $1 million of the prize.

“The money that is due to taxpayers is supposed to be paid,” said Gregory Blass, Suffolk’s commissioner of social services.

The county asked a court Wednesday to block the state from paying $950,921.90 of the money, claiming an audit once found that the couple overbilled Suffolk for homeless shelters they ran.

 The couple did not discuss the $950,921.90 in question at the news conference.

“We’re not saying anything,” 59-year-old Richard Morrison said.

The couple opted for a lump-sum payment instead of $165 million spread out over 26 years, so they actually got $51 million each before taxes.

“It feels fantastic,” said Mary Morrison, 57, who has already bought a Lexus.

The dispute with the county grew out of contracts the Morrisons had over 20 years to run a network of homeless shelters.

Richard Morrison was the executive director of Love’M Sheltering Inc., which ran homeless shelters until going out of business in 2005.

A 2004 audit by the county comptroller’s office found that Love’M Sheltering owed $612,000.

Blass said the audit found numerous irregularities, including inflated salaries and missing equipment purchased with county funds.

The Morrisons challenged the county’s authority to audit them, but a judge upheld the audit in 2008. With interest, the sum that the county seeks has grown to $950,921.90.

The Morrisons’ attorney, Michael Solomon, said his clients owe nothing because the audit involved the nonprofit corporation, Love’M Sheltering, and not the Morrisons as individuals.

“This is the first time that they ever heard that the county was attempting to claim that Richard and Mary Morrison, as individuals, had any responsibility,” Solomon said.

“These are the most honest, giving people in the world,” Solomon said. “If they believed that this was their legal responsibility to pay, they would have made arrangements to pay a long time ago.”

Blass said the Morrisons owe the money and are “hiding behind the corporation.”

Lawyers for Suffolk County went to court Wednesday seeking to block the state from paying the Morrisons $950,921.90 of their winnings.

Solomon agreed to hold the money in escrow while the case proceeds. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 20.

Mary Morrison said she and her husband would help disadvantaged children, while Richard Morrison said he hoped to back programs that encourage people to work their way off public assistance.

Richard Morrison said a top priority is financing his book about the Preamble to the Constitution, which he called “the most magnificent constitutional sentence in the history of mankind.”

Morrison wore a T-shirt with the Preamble written on it Thursday, but declined to discuss the book.

Blass said the Morrisons can help the downtrodden by paying the money they owe. He said he would ask to have the funds earmarked for homeless shelters.

“We have hundreds of homeless families that could benefit from a windfall like this,” he said. 

With Associated Press.