'I'm a lottery winner, but I don't have a penny in my pocket.'
Cabdriver Oheneba Boakye has dipped into savings to pay this month's rent on his Austell apartment.
Not what you'd expect from a lottery winner.
But this isn't a typical lottery case.
Boakye, a Ghanaian taxi driver, is one of 23 airport cabbies who hit the May 4 Big Game jackpot. A lawsuit has kept him and his colleagues from their $49.4 million winnings. "I'm sitting at home doing nothing," Boakye, 44, said. "I'm a lottery winner, but I don't have a penny in my pocket."
As the days pass, the waiting gets old.
Driving a cab again could be risky, Boakye says. Maybe he'll find something else.
"He can't stay home," said his wife, May, who still works at a dry cleaning shop. "We have to pay the bills."
The delay began when a group of cabbies, who say they were shut out of the money, filed a lawsuit after learning of the big win. A judge issued a restraining order soon after, prohibiting the lottery from paying out the money. During the past weeks nine of the 14 cabbies have dropped out of the lawsuit, some saying they have made peace with the winners.
"I'm sorry I got involved in this case in the first place," former plaintiff Belinda Brown said in an affidavit filed May 14.
But five cabbies still say they deserve some of the money. And the case could drag on for weeks.
A hearing on whether to lift the restraining order was scheduled today in Cobb County Superior Court. The case has since been moved to Fulton County, where the lottery has its headquarters. It usually takes two to three weeks for anything to happen after a case changes venues, lawyers say.
Now the 23 cabbies who rejoiced at winning roughly $2 million a piece earlier this month find themselves looking for odd jobs or contemplating a return to the taxi bullpen at Hartsfield International Airport.
Winning cabbie Akwasi Owusu Mensah has already returned to his old job.
"My cab is right over there," Mensah said, pointing to the sea of cabs in the bull pen. He chatted with fellow taxi drivers as he waited his turn to pick up a fare.
"I took like a week off. I'm not millionaire yet. I don't have the money."
Mensah said he is confident the group of 23 taxi drivers will prevail.
"Once we get a day in court, everything will be resolved," said Mensah, who was still smiling despite the lawsuit.
Mensah says the cabbies who filed the lawsuit are "a group of greedy people who are trying to steal money from the winners."
"That's exactly what I'm going to tell the judge if they put me on the stand," Mensah said. "It's baseless. All the information they gave in the lawsuit, it's not true."
The lawsuit filed by the losing cabbies says fellow taxi driver Max Ossei-Wusu collected $5 from about 37 airport cabbies on several occasions to play the seven-state Big Game lottery. Drivers usually pool their money in an effort to increase their chances when the jackpot goes over $50 million, airport taxi drivers said.
The losing cabbies contend that Ossei-Wusu was supposed to rollover any small winnings the group may have earned, and use that money to buy more lottery tickets each week until someone won the big jackpot.
Mensah disputes the notion that lottery players were an organized group.
"Whenever the jackpot goes high -- if you happen to be there, you can put your $5 in and play," he said. "Somebody can play today, but if you aren't here tomorrow, you're out."
The drivers at the bull pen back that view.
Several say they played on one or two occasions with Ossei-Wusu, but failed to give their money the last day. That's when Ossei-Wusu drove down to Griffin to give his daughter a lift home from college. He bought the winning ticket while he was there.
Many of those who failed to play that day have lost their appetite and plenty of sleep over their bad luck, but they haven't sued.
Ernest Tate, the lawyer for the winning cabbies, says there was never an agreement to rollover winnings. And furthermore, the losing cabbies didn't even buy tickets on an earlier day, when the group won $30, therefore there is no way any of their money could have been used to buy the winning lottery ticket.
He called the lawsuit "frivolous" and "vexatious" and has filed a countersuit seeking $10 million for "injury to (Ossei-Wusu's) reputation and the disruption of his family life."
Many members of the Ghanaian community oppose the lawsuit, saying both sides should settle out of court.
They refer to the still-popular chief system in Ghana, where local chiefs and elders hear civil disputes in an alternate system to the English-style courts introduced in colonial times. Many of the taxi drivers at the airport say if cabbies had a beef, they should have brought it before a local community leader first.
Francis Tsegah, Acting Ambassador of Ghana to the United States, agrees.
"Ghanaians are very peaceful people," Tsegah said in a phone interview from the Ghanaian Embassy in Washington.
"We try to resolve our problems without going to court. We have the elders of the community and friends and relatives," Tsegah said.
Tsegah has called both cabbie camps, trying to encourage a settlement, to no avail.
Local Ghanaian community leaders -- including the operator of a limo service for CNN, and an assistant professor of finance at Georgia State University -- have also called both sides, trying to foster a settlement.
But those actions amount to threats and intimidation, according to a court papers filed by Howard Stopeck, the lawyer for the losing cabbies. And one former plaintiff, Patrick Anochie, said he was beaten by "thugs" at the airport, according to an affidavit.
Stopeck has filed a motion in court asking that Ossei-Wusu and "his representatives" stop communicating "through intermediaries" in an attempt to resolve the case.
Tate has filed several responses, saying Ghanaian community leaders have every right to try to broker a settlement out of court. No one is intimidating anyone, he said, and the claim of the beating at the airport is outlandish. "Show me the police report."
Georgia State University Assistant Professor of Finance Charles Appeadu says he took it upon himself to try to help both sides. He hasn't intimidated anyone, he said.
The whole lawsuit is a shame, Appeadu said. If the five cabbies lose, their wages could be garnished for years to come. A lot of people interpret it as a case of a lawyer trying to take advantage of these poor cabbies. No one wants that to happen, I think. Not even the winning team."
Mensah says he's not angry at the plaintiffs.
"I know they're not harming me," he said. "They're just delaying my money."
In the meantime, he'll continue to drive his cab. He won't tell his passengers he's a millionaire-in-waiting -- that might spoil the tip.
And he says he won't forget his fellow cabbies, although he wouldn't say exactly what he plans to do for them.
"We're not going to be greedy," he said of the winning group. "We want to help people do whatever they want to do."
