Chubb IT Employees Win Mega Millions Lottery

An informal syndicate of 10 people who work in Chubb Insurance's commercial lines IT organization has claimed to have won a Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $216 million. According to regional news reports, each member of the group put $5 into a pool for the purchase of a block of 50 tickets. There is no word as to whether sophisticated risk modeling technology maintained by the IT department was used to select numbers.

Reports differ about whether the winners will take a lump sum payment of approximately $140 million or split an $8.1 million, 26-year annuity. The putative winners expressed their jubilation during a press conference yesterday at the carrier's Whitehouse Station facility in central New Jersey.

One winner, Oscar Oviedo, lacked the $5 necessary to play and opted in on credit from ticket purchaser Bob Space, according to a Newark Star-Ledger report. Upon demanding and receiving the $5 dollars from Oviedo, Space congratulated him on being a millionaire, according to the report. For one member of the group, Todd Ellis, senior vice president and CIO of Chubb Commercial Insurance, the win is likely to be anticlimactic, as Ellis was presented Insurance & Technology's Elite 8 Award in 2004.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio