An Australian accountant and his financial planner friend have won a multimillion-dollar resort on a tropical island in Micronesia that was raffled by its outgoing owners.
Josh Ptasznyk, a tax accountant, 26, and his friend Nick, a financial planner, 25, both from Wollongong, will take possession of the Kosrae Nautilus Resort after beating a reported 75,000 other people from 150 countries who entered the contest.
The raffle, in which the lucky pair paid $129 for three tickets, is also a windfall for the resort’s former owners, Doug and Sally Beitz, who say they have netted about $4m.
Ptasznyk told Guardian Australia he was “out at the pub” when he fielded a phone call from Doug Beitz on Tuesday night, which left him at first in disbelief then “ecstatic”.
“It’s just been insane,” he said. “At the end of the day, it could have happened to anyone. But it happened to me.”
The pair entered the contest after Ptasznyk read an online article during his lunch break and was struck by the “pretty good odds” of winning.
“When we saw it, it was just the fact it was not some ridiculous amount of odds, it was just 75,000 tickets,” he said.
The young accountant said he and Nick would first visit the 16-room resort and scuba enterprise, which Beitz claims is profitable, debt-free and fully staffed, before deciding whether to live on the island and run it themselves.
“I don’t know if it’ll be myself or a manager, because I don’t want to commit to that at the moment because I’m working at the moment still.
“I’m just happy and not going to go and make any rash drastic changes or anything. I do enjoy what I do, I’ve been working nine years now in the practice.
“I know I’ve just become some world news massively, I’m starting to [realise] why my mate was staying on the sidelines.”
The route to the remote Pacific island from Ptasznyk’s Australian home entails flights to Hawaii then Guam, from which Kosrae island is another five-and-a-half hours by plane.
The Beitz couple, who built the resort in 1994 but want to return to the Gold Coast, embarked on their novel method of unloading the resort after their son thought up the idea of a raffle.
“We will do financially well out of it,” Doug Beitz told ABC before the draw, adding the ideal winner would be “someone who likes warm weather, likes meeting new people from around the world, is adventurous”.
