Winning the lottery may seem like the best thing that could ever happen to you, but it’s
not always a happy ending.
For some, it’s perhaps the worst thing that’s ever happened to them and they’ve been left
with even less than before they started, so join us as we count 10 lottery winners who
lost it all Callie Rogers
In 2003, Callie Rogers was 16 and living with her foster parents in the UK, working as a
shop clerk earning around £3.60 an hour.
She bought a lottery ticket and what happened next, changed her life forever.
She won £1.9 million and despite saying in the beginning that she would not turn to a
lavish life, ended up doing so anyway by buying four large homes, several new cars and had
2 breast surgeries.
She purchased expensive gifts for all of her boyfriends and even bought a car for one of
them and paid him to chauffeur her around, since she was too young to drive herself at
the age of 16.
It was another drug, however, that would cause Rogers to lose her fortune; cocaine.
She estimates that she spend around £250,000 pounds on the drug.
After all this, she was not left with much money.
She sold her homes and fancy cars and rented a modest townhouse, saving the last remaining
£40,000 of her once massive fortune and got a job as a maid.
However, in April 2012, low on funds, pregnant with twins and with a new loving boyfriend
at her side, Rogers said, "For the first time I feel like I have everything I need" It really
goes to show that money isn’t always everything.
Jack Whittaker For once, we have a man who was already a
successful businessman at the time of winning the lottery.
Jack Whittaker spent decades building a water and sewer pipeline company in West Virginia,
but entered a new level of wealth when he won $315 million playing Powerball in 2002,
the single largest jackpot at the time.
Winning the lottery gave Jack more than just money, though.
He also became famous.
He was constantly being asked for money, and developed gambling and drinking habits.
His wife of 42 years ended up leaving him and some thieves stole a briefcase from his
strip club containing over half a million dollars, and in another incident, stole $100,000
that Whittaker had left in plain sight on the passenger seat of his car.
His beloved Brandi had been only 15 when Whittaker won the lottery.
By 17, she was dead, her body found wrapped in tarp behind a junked van.
An autopsy revealed recent cocaine use.
Not long after, Whittaker's daughter and Brandi's mother, who suffered from recurring lymphoma,
was also found dead.
Lisa Arcand In April 2004, Lisa Arcand was a single mother
in the US, when she bought a lottery ticket that turned her into a millionaire.
After that, she instantly started spending mass amounts of money, on mostly unnecessary
things.
First, she hosted a party for friends and family, who ordered several $200 bottles of
wine.
She enrolled her son in a private school with a $10,000 annual tuition.
She went on multiple vacations and purchased a house filled with furniture.
She then set her eyes on opening her own business, and bought a seafood restaurant.
Less than 6 months down the line, financial issues forced her to close the place down.
While the lottery mandated annual payments of $35,000 rather than a lump sum, a financial
services company aggressively went after her, offering an upfront payment of $200,000 in
exchange for $15,000 per year of her winnings.
While this gave her more up-front cash, it put her in a higher tax bracket, further reducing
her money.
Lisa was left with a failed business and an empty bank account, eagerly awaiting her next
annual payment.
Michael Carroll Back in 2002, Michael Carroll won the UK’s
national lottery, winning a very healthy sum of £9.7 million pounds.
A decade later, he was living on public benefits after having wasted all of his riches.
Carroll became the definition of being rich and reckless.
He bought, and destroyed a mansion.
He threw lavish parties for his friends and on a daily basis would spend over £3,000
on smoking crack cocaine.
He bought expensive cars and destroyed them on his DIY race track he created on the grounds
of his mansion, and would let the wreckages stay and rust in the rain.
Unsurprisingly, he spent his fair share on prostitutes and flashy jewellery.
Eventually, reality caught up with Carroll when he was forced to sell his Mansion at
a loss, and he was even caught shoplifting at a grocery market.
Janite Lee In 1993, Janite Lee won $18 million on the
lottery.
The 52 year old South Korean began giving much of her winnings away to charity, although
she did move in to a million dollar house.
With $620,000 annual winnings, Lee’s charitable efforts included sizable donations to Washington
University School of Law, and also donated hundreds of thousands to presidential political
campaigns, which earned her tableside seating with Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Unfortunately, she was hiding a secret.
That million dollar house she moved into, she didn’t buy.
Instead, she purchased it on a mortgage.
In addition to this mortgage, she leased luxury cars and reportedly borrowed millions more
from banks and credit cards.
Even when she tried to make financially smart moves, such as paying off a loan ahead of
schedule, she ended up deeper in debt by owing $750,000 in early payoff penalties.
By 2001, Lee was forced to sell the rights to future lottery payments and filed for bankruptcy,
being $2.5 million in debt.
Amanda Clayton Amanda Clayton was a 20 year old jobless single
mother living on public assistance, when she cashed in a $1 million lottery ticket in late
2011.
Naturally, she stopped collecting her government check, right?
Wrong.
Turns out she carried on collecting her $200 monthly checks, she thought as long as they
kept coming in she was entitled to keep them.
In March the next year, a viewer tipped off a local TV station who then tracked down Clayton
and found her paying for snacks with a public assistance card and then packing a moving
truck for transitioning to her newly purchased home.
When confronted, Clayton defended her right to be on the checks, claiming she was still
unemployed and "I have bills to pay.
I have two houses," a televised explanation that resulted in public outrage.
According to Michigan law, welfare recipients must report any changes to their income within
10 days.
The state attorney general charged Clayton with welfare fraud, to which she pleaded no
contest.
She was put on probation and ordered to pay back the money she was not entitled to.
A year after winning, Clayton died at her home of a suspected drug overdose.
Bud Post Let’s just say, Bud Post didn’t have the
easiest start in life.
His mother died when he was 8, and his father had him sent off to an orphanage.
As an adult he became a carnival worker and from there had a series of random jobs that
didn’t equate to much and he couldn’t afford a home or a car.
In 1998, with less than $3 in his checking account, Post pawned a ring for $40, and spent
the money on Pennsylvania Lottery tickets.
The next thing you know, he walked away with a whopping $16.2 million dollars.
So, did life get easier for Bud Post after this?
Nope.
Once word of his good fortune spread, his landlady and occasionally girlfriend demanded,
and received one third of his winnings, claiming he’d promised to split the winnings after
she bought the tickets for him.
His brother decided to have Bud killed and hired a hitman to take him out.
It wasn’t all down to external sources though, Bud made his fair share of cockups, like buying
a plane he wasn’t able to fly.
He spent his last $2.6 million on 2 homes, several motorcycles, three cars, a truck and
a sailboat.
He also racked up seven marriages during this time.
Nearly penniless, the lottery winner eventually lived on a $450 disability payment until he
died at age 66, eight years after winning big
Alex Toth In 1990 Alex Toth lived with his wife and
six children from previous relationships.
They had less than $25 to live on for the next seven days, after already having spent
weeks living on canned beans, rice and soup.
This all changed when Toth bought a lottery ticket and won $13 million.
As usual, they claimed the money wouldn’t change their way of life, yet they spent the
first 3 months living on a $1,000 a night hotel room in Las Vegas.
They gambled, dined, shopped and bought tickets to expensive live shows.
Once they got bored, they returned to Florida and purchased a double-wide on 10 acres of
land.
Before long, money troubles began.
The Toths filed for bankruptcy -- twice -- and were convicted of filing three years of fraudulent
tax returns.
The IRS said the Toths had falsely reported gambling losses to offset their lottery winnings
and now owed millions in back taxes.
In addition, Toth was arrested multiple times for growing marijuana and writing bad checks.
After losing all of the winnings, they moved in with their son and daughter in law.
Just a short time later, Alex Toth died penniless.
Lou Eisenberg Another story where the man ends up broke,
but for once a happy ending.
Lou Eisenberg is a retiree in Florida living a simple life.
He spends an occasional day at the dog track making penny bets and then returns to the
mobile home he shares with his long-time girlfriend.
But life was not always so cash strapped for Lou.
On Friday the 13th in 1981, Eisenberg won $5 million in the New York Lottery (the largest
payout at the time), which he accepted in $219,000 annual instalments ($130,000 after
taxes) for the next 20 years.
The win -- and the fame that came with it -- led to talk show appearances, television
commercials and lavish trips to foreign lands.
He treated friends and family to expensive cuisine, shared the winnings with two of his
three wives and helped whomever he could.
In 2001, when he received his final lottery check, he knew one thing for certain: He was
broke again, and would probably stay that way the rest of his life, content to live
on earnings from his Social Security and pension checks.
Still, Eisenberg doesn't regret spending it all.
"I wouldn't have done it any other way," he claimed.
Willie Hurt Willie Hurt was a simple family man living
in Michigan, US.
When he won the 1989 lottery jackpot, he didn’t think it would change his life, but oh was
he wrong.
By the time he'd received just two of the $156,000 annual installments on his lottery
win, Hurt was in the process of a divorce and had lost custody of his children.
He'd also spent most of the money on crack cocaine.
Then things got even worse.
After a 48 hour drug and alcohol binge, Hurt allegedly argued with his girlfriend when
they couldn’t find more crack.
When she was later found shot in the head, Hurt was charged with first degree murder,
and if convicted, would spend life in prison.
Although there's no word on whether Hurt was convicted, even if he was, he could continue
to receive future lottery payments.