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| $10 Million Winner Feeling 'Bulletproof' |
| By Jeffry Scott
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| April 16, 2001
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It's a day America has traditionally set aside to lose money. In a way, it was no different for Stephen Fowler of Atlanta.
He had to pay the IRS about $350 in taxes.
Lucky for him, that was offset by the $10 million he won this morning as the big winner of the iWon.com sweepstakes.
"I was speechless, numb; I didn't know what to say," said Fowler. "Then somebody asked me how I felt. I said, 'I feel 10 feet tall and bulletproof!'"
Fowler, a single 30-year-old who earns "just under six figures" as a securities investor for United Parcel Service, was talking to a reporter on a cell phone while crossing Manhattan in a limousine.
He had a $400,000 check in his pocket, a TV crew in tow and the address of a Jaguar dealership. "I think I'm going to buy my dream car," he said.
Then he planned to go shopping at Versace and swing by St. Patrick's Cathedral "to say 'thank you God'," he said.
Fowler was one of three finalists who were selected, lottery style, with ping pong balls in a mixing machine. The other two were Michael Buttrey of Reston, Va., and Diane Sanders of Bridgeport, Ohio.
Fowler says he plans to keep his job, returning to the office Thursday. "I called the office to tell them I won, but I couldn't reach anybody," he said. His first call was to his mother, Joyce Sandler, 51, who lives in Dover, Del.
When he gets back to Atlanta, he said, he'll probably devote more time to golf and go house shopping.
He said he hasn't decided yet whether to take his winnings in a lump sum or put it in an annuity. Either way, the tax man, on tax day, will have the last say.
"By the time the IRS gets to me and the state of Georgia," he says, "I'll probably only have about $5 million left."
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