PCH Declaring Bankruptcy

Welp, guess some Publisher's Clearing House "forever" winners that were slated to get $5K/wk for life are learning the meaning of the old adage "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". The smart ones who opted for the lump sum payout of +/- $3M will be sitting pretty with no worries after PCH has announced they are filing for bankruptcy and "forever" winners, now classified as general unsecured creditors, will no longer be getting paid. They likely will never be because the US Bankruptcy Code has a strict 5 tier hierarchy of who gets any funds/partial funds recovered in a bankruptcy, and general unsecured creditors are #4 on this list:

1. Administrative expenses: to handle the bankruptcy, so lawyers will be getting 1st dibs on the financial scraps of the company
2. Secured creditors: any creditors that have liens on property, or collateral secured loans, so the banks get 2nd dibs.
3. Priority unsecured creditors: company employees, c-suite types likely, can be paid by some of scrap's crumbs swept up that've fallen to the floor while the top 2 are divvying up stuff.
4. General unsecured creditors: the poor saps that didn't take the lump sum PCH "forever" payout.
5. Equity holders: The other poor saps, stockholders that were not high level enough to be privy to insider knowledge the company was going to declare bankruptcy so they could discreetly sell their company stock. But since PCH was not a publicly traded company there are no stockholders, making the #4 general unsecured creditors dead last on the list.

---

anonymous Other September 16, 2025 at 2:57 pm 0 0