David Lee Edwards David Lee Edwards on the surface seemed to
have an unlucky life.
He was a convicted felon from Kentucky who had spent over a third of his life behind
bars.
He was 46 and a high school dropout, an ex-con who went to jail for robbing a gas station
20 years before.
But things all quickly changed for him during the summer of 2001.
That was the year he won $73.7 million dollars in the powerball lottery!
However, only 12 short years later, things completely had changed for him in a modern
day lottery tragedy.
What exactly happened?
The Big Win In August of 2001, a trip to the convenience
store and the purchase of $7 bucks worth of lottery tickets changed everything in David’s
life!
The millions of dollars was about to change David’s lifestyle in ways he can’t imagine.
He drove to Louisville, Kentucky after his win to receive his ceremonial check.
The media at his press conference had a bunch of questions for him.
He was doing his best to look as comfortable as he can in the suit he was wearing, because
of course, it wasn’t anything he was used to.
David admitted to his background.
He explained the bad things he had done in his life, but he also wanted everyone to know
that things had changed for him.
Reporters wanted to know just what he would do with his money.
David replied that he wasn’t going to be like other lottery winners and say that he
was gonna buy mansions and cars.
He wanted his money to last not JUST HIS lifetime, but he wanted it to last for his future generations.
But strangely enough, he quickly changed his tune in that very same press conference.
His girlfriend at the time, Shawna Maddox was standing next to him.
Almost as soon as he said that he wanted the money to last generations, he mentioned that
he wanted a new Bentley.
And Shawna wanted a new Ferrari.
They quote, “Need a new everything!”
Upgraded David chose the lump sum for his win, which
paid out roughly 27 million dollars.
He ended up hiring a financial adviser to help him manage his money, something that
was the first big step in the right direction.
However, the very first thing his hired financial advisor, James Gibbs, did was arrange a $200,000
thousand dollar loan for David.
Just why?
So David could then celebrate in Las Vegas while he was waiting for his lottery payment!
But remarkably, just SIX short days later, David had NO money left!
Apparently David couldn’t be controlled.
He didn’t follow Gibbs' advice.
Within the first 3 months, he had already spent approximately $3 million dollars!
New Real Estate How exactly did David and Shawna spend their
first 3 million dollars?
One major purchase was real estate, something that David at least had a chance of making
money from.
He and Shawna bought a house in a gated community in Florida for roughly one and a half million
dollars.
But the rest of the money was spent on completely unnecessary things, money that he’d never
get back.
Expenses such as flying on a private jet back and forth between Kentucky and his new house
in Florida.
Those flights cost roughly 85 hundred dollars each way.
He’d often bring an entourage of friends, and guess who paid for everything!
Gibbs was trying to get David and Shawna to stop the spending, but he couldn’t get them
to do it.
They were still in the afterglow.
Also, within 5 months of winning the lottery, they quickly got married, in January of 2002.
New Cars After blowing the initial 3 million dollars,
David also started collecting cars.
He bought a $200,000 dollar Lamborghini Diablo.
He bought a $90,000 Dodge Viper.
He even bought a $35,000 dollar Hummer golf cart for his eleven year old daughter Tiffani
to drive around the neighborhood in!
She was from an earlier marriage David had.
He paid half a million dollars to his ex just so she could live with him in Florida.
There were plenty of other cars as well.
He easily had a million dollars worth of cars sitting in his driveway and on the street,
something that his neighbors complained about.
People came by just to confirm the stories they were hearing!
More Spending However, high-end cars weren't the only things
that got David around.
Apparently, he got tired of renting private jets just to fly between Florida and Kentucky.
He decided to buy Learjet for around $1.9 million dollars!
Of course, David also bought other luxury items, such as a plasma TV for thirty grand.
There was a Rolex for 34 thousand.
He also had bought a ring for a whopping a hundred and fifty nine thousand dollars!
David also began collecting what he thought were antiques, such as swords and armor.
This is something we’ll get into later.
He bought another house.
This time it was for a vacation house in Palm Springs, California for six hundred grand.
He also tried to make money in investments other than real estate, such as a limo company
he bought.
He also bought three racehorses.
He even bought a fiber-optics installation company for four and a half million dollars!
After ONLY one year being a lottery winner, David had spent a whopping 12 million dollars!
New Advisor But he didn’t feel that it was his fault.
That’s because he went ahead and fired his first advisor, James Gibbs.
He hired another adviser, Jeffrey Chandler.
But he wasn’t the right guy as well apparently!
That’s because in March of 2003, David ended up suing Chandler, claiming he had scammed
him out of at least a million dollars.
Early in 2002, David’s pilot had introduced the two of them.
So he hired Chandler as a business consultant as well as his financial advisor in June of
2002, and David began paying him $5,000 dollars a week.
David ended up putting Chandler in charge of the fiber-optics company he had bought,
World Solutions.
But Chandler then supposedly raised his own salary to $12,500 dollars within a short time!
Chandler supposedly told other employees to deal directly with him so David would have
no clue what was going on.
David contended that Chandler used company funds to pay his personal expenses such as
credit card bills and legal fees.
At the same time, Chandler convinced him to put ANOTHER $1.75 million into World Solutions.
This was all according to David when he tried to sue Chandler.
They ultimately settled out of court, and David was again left without an advisor.
The Way Down Not long after he sued Chandler, David filed
for divorce because Shawna herself was getting out of control with her lifestyle.
They ended up getting back together.
But her lifestyle of using different substances was taking its toll.
The money was just accelerating her behavior.
David ended up putting her in rehab in Malibu California for 60 days, something that cost
him 80 grand.
But it didn’t help.
Things were still quickly going out of control for the both of them.
In April of 2004, David took out half a million dollars using their Florida home as collateral.
Just a month later, he opened his house to a TV crew.
They documented all the things he had bought throughout the house.
David himself had said quote,"If I run out of every dime, it's been one heck of a ride.
And I got to help a lot of people.
So at the end of the day, if it all went away, I'd be happy.”
Shawna wasn’t just affecting her own life.
She was drastically pulling David down as well.
David started getting back to using substances himself, and according to their friends, it
was Shawna who led him back to it.
The sky was beginning to fall for them.
New Lien In September of 2005, a lien was placed on
their Florida house by their Homeowners Association because David owed around twenty six hundred
dollars in maintenance fees and interest.
By December of 2005, Bank of America sued David to recover almost a hundred and seventy
one grand that he owed on his visa card!
Just how much money did they have left at this point?
By April of 2006, their Florida house was in foreclosure.
Just because David owed the HOA almost nine thousand dollars.
That’s a very small amount of money for someone that at one time had 27 million at
their disposal.
By May, their home was bought up by real estate investors for nine hundred grand, plus the
late maintenance fees.
When the investors took possession in early June, David and Shawna were both still living
in the house.
They had to have them physically removed!
The same investors later discovered that David owed Palm Beach County over fifty one grand
in back property taxes for 2004 and 2005.
But the investors eventually flipped the house for around $2 million dollars.
Warehouse Living After they got kicked out, David and Shawna
decided to live in a warehouse he had been renting to store all the things he bought,
such as furniture and cars.
Rent was a little over twenty five hundred dollars a month, and David was often late
with it.
They were trying to liquidate their assets as quickly as possible, but the money never
seemed to last.
They were spending time at the warehouse sometimes without electricity!
Remember James Gibbs?
Although he was fired by David, he continued to help the couple out sometimes by lending
them money.
He’d also sometimes help them sell their stuff to have some money.
But none of his help worked.
For example, he helped David sell a drill from his defunct fiber-optics company for
20 grand.
But according to Gibbs, when he gave him money on a Friday, by the following Tuesday all
the money had already been gone!
Apparently, even though they were basically broke, if they got more money, they would
still spend it like they had millions of dollars.
But even worse was that by the time David and Shawna started living in the warehouse,
his health was deteriorating fast.
He didn't have health insurance and by that time area hospitals were already tired of
treating him without any money or insurance.
They were starting to turn him away.
Beginning of the End In January 2007, Shawna was able to check
David into a hospital.
He could barely walk.
At around the same time, the warehouse owners started threatening to repossess their unit
because they stopped making payments.
David was still in the hospital fighting for his life, with no money to his name.
This was around the time Shawna left, once all the money dried up.
In July of 2007, the contents of David's warehouse unit were auctioned off for around $160,000
thousand dollars, pennies on the dollar for all the supposed antiques for what David had
paid.
Gibbs had said that if David had just simply followed the plan he had for him, he would
have had access to 85 thousand dollars a month for life.
Gibbs had put about $16 million dollars of David's winnings in bonds and annuities, to
protect David from himself.
But David simply cashed everything out.
David Lee Edwards sadly passed away at age 58 in 2013 alone in a hospice.