From Mega Winner to Mega Loser

Ruined by Money!

16 Tragic Lottery Winner Stories

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Astonishing stories of lottery winners crashing from mega winners to mega losers keep on coming. Despite having amassed a staggering list of accounts of what has become known as the lottery curse, I am hesitant to share any of them. We all teeter far too close to the precipice to gloat or mock or sneer at winners whom millions once envied and now shrink from in horror.

We can learn from these stories, however. They demonstrate that what to our small thinking seem idyllic circumstances could so easily ruin us. Few of us have any conception of how far off track we are in supposing we know how to give ourselves a good life. Pursuing our own fantasies might not be nearly as smart as we suppose.

“A fool and his money are soon parted,” is a saying that keeps echoing through the following stories. Another is, “Give people enough rope and they will hang themselves.” Particularly scary, however, is that there are none so blind as those who see themselves as being better than others.

What makes the fable of Midas so powerful is that he could be any of us. The more we think it couldn’t happen to us, the more likely we are to be blinded by false confidence and act as rashly as the king who had no idea he was about to lose everything by the granting of his wish that everything he touch turn to gold.

In a blink, our dreams can turn to nightmares.

Here’s some ancient wisdom that almost everyone spurns and yet the consequences still keep playing out in lives today:

    1 Timothy 6:9 But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction.

    Hebrews 13:5 Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have . . .

Now for the stories.

James Allen Hayes

In 1998, James Allen Hayes was working night shift as a security guard supervisor when he won a $19 million lottery jackpot.

“I’m not going to blow the money,” he declared in a newspaper interview. Soon after, half of his winnings went to his wife, whom he divorced. Then he developed a $1,000 a week heroin addiction. His $19 million dwindled to the point where he applied for 38 jobs and failed to land any of them. “I was broke, dope-sick, %@#* [angry] at the world, living in a garage, with my beloved cat looking up at me hungry,” he later told a reporter.

So he became a bank robber! Despite robbing ten or more banks, he managed to net less than $40,000. In 2017, he was arrested in the abandoned garage he had been forced to call home. At age 55, having been ordered to pay back all the money he had stolen (how, I have no idea), he is now in jail, filling in his time writing his memoirs titled Lottery to Robbery.

Jail has at least broken his addiction, however. “Prison is the most horrible thing ever but I’m thankful it happened. It saved my life,” he said.

William Post III

William Post III won $16.2 million in a 1988 Pennsylvania lottery. Shortly afterward, his brother tried to have him and his wife murdered for the inheritance. Post survived, only to be sued by an ex-girlfriend for a share of the winnings. A judge eventually ruled that Post owed her one-third of all the proceeds, despite Post’s vehement denial of any agreement and his inability to pay, as he was by then deeply in debt.

In fact, within two weeks of receiving his first annual payment of nearly $500,000, he had already blown two-thirds of it and by three months, he was $500,000 in debt. He faced a stint in jail for firing a gun at a debt collector.

“Everybody dreams of winning money, but nobody realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork,” The Washington Post quoted him as saying in 1993.

Two of his other famous quotes are, “I was much happier when I was broke,” and, “Once I’m no longer a lottery winner, people will leave me alone. That’s all I want. Just peace of mind.”

Before he died in 2006, he was reportedly living on a disability pension and was $1 million in debt.

Maria Lou Devrell

Maria Lou Devrell of Australia, won $5 million in 2011 and ended up murdered by her accountant, whom she and her husband had known for over twenty years. Frustrated by her “wasteful spending,” the accountant hit her over the head with a rubber mallet and smothered her in a fit of rage.

Victoria Zell

Victoria Zell’s husband won the Minnesota Powerball jackpot in 2001 when she was divorcing him. She cajoled him into giving her a substantial but undisclosed portion of the $11 million. From then until 2004, she was twice charged with the possession of methamphetamines. In 2005, she spent a day on drugs and alcohol and drove, telling her passengers she would show them “how to drive crazy.” She ran two stop signs and rolled the SUV, killing one passenger and paralyzing the other. Between then and the trial she was twice charged with possession of crystal meth. She was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, and settled a civil lawsuit for far more money than she had left.

Abraham Shakespeare

Just three years after winning $30 million in 2006, Florida man, Abraham Shakespeare vanished. His dead body was eventually found under a concrete slab. The woman charged with his murder had conned him out of $1.8 million before shooting him.

Money disputes had begun almost the instant he won. He found himself in court, being sued by his co-worker who greedily claimed that at least some of the winnings should be his.

“Shakespeare’s troubles began after winning the lottery,” says Wikipedia.

His brother said that Abraham told him “all the time,” “I’d have been better off broke.”

Callie Rogers

In 2003, at just 16-years-old, British teen, Callie Rogers won about $3 million. Hundreds of thousands of it were reportedly spent on cocaine.

“I’ve just wanted to make people happy by spending money on them,” she told a newspaper. “But it hasn’t made me happy. It just made me anxious that people are only after me for my money.” After at least one suicide attempt, she ended up having to juggle three cleaning jobs and living with her mother. Ten years after the win, she said, “My life is a shambles and hopefully now [the money] has all gone I can find some happiness. It’s brought me nothing but unhappiness. It’s ruined my life.”

Gillian Bayford

Winner of $230 million in 2012, Gillian Bayford, split with her husband fifteen months later and no longer speaks to her parents or brother. “It’s upsetting and raw,” she told a newspaper. “The money was supposed to make them happy. But it’s made them demanding and greedy.”

Six years after winning, she married a convicted fraudster. This was less than a year after her acrimonious split from someone she labeled a gold-digger. At the end of 2018, her name was again smeared across tabloid headlines; having been charged with assaulting one of her exes, a domestic abuse campaigner. (Charges were later dropped.)

Michael Carroll

In 2002, Englishman Michael Carroll won $15 million. One of the many unexpected consequences was that, after finding five of his Rottweilers dead with their throats cut, he decided he had better pay off thugs who threatened his family.

Despite, like so many others, promising he would not be tempted into wasting his money, he lost it all on drugs, cars and prostitutes; at one period being forced to swap his mansion for a tent in the woods. He said he found it easier to live off unemployment payments “than a million”.

Dubbed by tabloids the Lotto Lout, one of his exploits got him sentenced with 240 hours of community service for breaking 32 car and shop windows with a slingshot. Later, he spent time in prison and in a homeless shelter.

By 2013, having been banned from driving, he was having to ride a bicycle to his workplace, where he packed and stacked shortbread and cookies on an assembly line. Of his modest income, he said, “I treasure those wages more than any £9 million fortune. I’ve only got one chance left – I’d have been dead in six months if I’d carried on that lifestyle of drinking and drug taking.”

He did, however, admit to twice attempting suicide after squandering his millions.

He is reported to have called money the “root of all evil” and said that money “brings out the worst in people.”

Jeffrey Dampier

With the $20 million he won from the Illinois Lottery in 1996, Jeffrey Dampier started a popcorn business and bought lavish presents for family members, including his sister-in-law, with whom he was having an affair. Nevertheless, with her boyfriend’s help, she turned on him in 2005. He was bound and assaulted. When repeated beating failed to get him to hand over his money, Jeffrey Dampier died from a shot to the back of his head.

Keith Gordon

The once happily married British baker, Keith Gordon, eventually died alone from a heart attack that was blamed on his money stress. Yes, he had won $14 million in 2005. He is said to have been so bored after giving up his job as a baker that he drank himself to death.

“My life was brilliant. But the lottery has ruined everything,” he told a reporter in 2010 before his death. “What’s the point of having money when it sends you to bed crying? I thought the lotto win was going to be the answer to my dreams. Now those dreams have turned to dust.”

Jane Park

In 2013, 17-year-old Scottish woman, Jane Park, won one million pounds after purchasing her first lottery ticket. Four years later, she said that her winnings had made her life “ten times worse” and considered suing the lottery organizers over her misery.

“I have material things but apart from that my life is empty. What is my purpose in life? . . . I wish I had no money most days. . . . My life would be so much easier if I hadn’t won,” she told a newspaper.

At the end of 2018, after a string of failed relationships, she was reported to be launching a website where potential suitors can apply to be her boyfriend and be paid £60,000 a year. It is claimed that after never being sure whether she is being loved for herself or for her money, she would rather have the financial arrangements out in the open.

Janite Lee

Janite Lee won $18 million in 1993. In 2001, she filed for bankruptcy, having less than $700 to her name and $2.5 million in debts.

Billie Bob Harrell, Jr

After winning a $31 million Texan lottery in 1997, preacher Billie Bob Harrell, Jr slid from ecstasy to agony in less than two years.

Having donated generously to his church and buying 480 turkeys for the poor, he was so constantly pestered by people wanting money from him that he was forced to change his phone number several times. Less than a year after his win, he found himself divorced. Not long after telling his financial adviser, “Winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he was found dead with a gunshot wound in his head. He was about to have dinner with his ex-wife. Though doubted by some family members, suicide is the official cause of death.

Alex and Rhoda Toth

In 1990, the Florida couple won $13 million from a Florida Lotto jackpot, payable over 20 years in annual payments of $666,666.66. In 2006, both of them were charged with filing fraudulent income tax returns. By then, they were living in squalor with their only electricity coming from a power cord connected to their car engine. Alex suffered a heart attack and died before facing trial for tax evasion. Rhoda tried claiming she was too ill to stand trial. Having been videotaped moving freely without crutches or a wheelchair, she ended up sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $1.1 million to the IRS.

Ibi Roncaioli

In 1991, Ibi Roncaioli of Ontario, Canada, won $5 million. The Toronto Star reported that she lived a secret life after her big win; giving $2 million to a son she had had with another man, whom her husband knew nothing about.

In 2008, her husband was found guilty of poisoning her to death by injection. During the trial, it was repeatedly asserted that Ibi had pushed her household to near bankruptcy, despite her husband’s high income and her lottery winnings. She would go on gambling splurges of $1,000 a day and illegally signed bank documents so she could transfer winnings to her possession.

Denise Rossi

When, in 1996, Denise Rossi won $1.3 million in the California Lottery, she told no-one – not even her husband of 25 years. Apparently, she had been secretly harboring ill-will toward him. Seizing this as her opportunity, she shocked him by seeking a divorce just eleven days later, while continuing to conceal her win. More than two years after the divorce, a misdirected piece of mail landed in his mailbox, exposing the deceit. The court ruled Denise in violation of asset disclosure laws and ordered that her entire winnings be awarded to her husband.

More

I’ve stopped because I think the point is made, not because an end of examples is anywhere in sight.

Few of us realize that our greatest disaster could be triggered by our fondest wish coming true. Maybe we would be better off begging God to save us from ourselves.

Sources

For a detailed list of sources for the above information, see Sources.

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