A lottery winner from western Russia has been forced to delete her social media accounts and remain indoors after hitting the multimillion jackpot earlier this month.
Natalya Vlasova, 63, won a record-breaking half a billion rubles ($8.5 million), although her name didn’t surface until two weeks after the announcement, prompting a nationwide search.
Since then, Vlasova and her daughter Yekaterina have been forced to delete their social media accounts, the Vesti Voronezh news program reported on Monday.
“Relatives say that, in addition to requests for help, they began to receive threats from extortionists,” Vesti reported.
Vlasova, a pensioner from the Voronezh settlement of Panino, will receive the payout in installments after the New Year. The sum amounts to approximately 39,000 times the average monthly pension in Russia.
The previous record lottery payout of 350 million rubles went to a resident of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk in early 2016.
