Here are a few of the worst things to happen with winning the lottery!
7 - Willie Seely When "Wild" Willie Seely and his wife Donna
won a share of a $450 million jackpot, they thought that they could finally slow down
and live life the way they always wanted to.
Willie dreamed of spending his days hunting, fishing, and watching NASCAR without having
to worry about how he'll pay the bills.
With a boatload of cash on the way, it seemed like he and his wife could do just that.
But reality rarely meets our expectations, and the Seelys' new life was fraught with
more stress and complications than they bargained for.
First off, the money was not as overwhelming as the humongous jackpot implied.
The $450 million pot was first divided between three winners.
Then, Willie and 15 of his co-workers, who had all bought tickets in a workplace pool,
split their share.
Willie and his wife walked away with $4 million after taxes.
While all of us would love to deposit $4 Million into our accounts, it wasn't the mind-blowing
fortune they thought they'd won.
Still, the Seelys were able to leave their jobs, buy themselves a couple of new cars,
and fix up their house, which had taken a beating during Hurricane Sandy.
So what was the issue?
Well, it seems with all the media attention that came with winning the lottery, there
came an endless stream of people looking to get their hands on the Seelys' money.
Their home phone rings nonstop as long-lost family members and scammers line up to take
their shot at a piece of the winnings.
Willie has even brandished his shotgun at unwanted visitors on their property on multiple
occasions.
While the Seelys are thankful for the money they received and the freedom it granted them,
they could certainly do without all the strings attached to that much cash.
6 - The Griffiths In 2005, Lara and Roger Griffiths won the
lottery for 1.8 million pounds.
Their lives were forever changed, but not in the way they hoped or expected.
While the piles of extra cash allowed them to splurge on luxuries, their financial situation
grew increasingly more complicated before it completely bottomed out with the economic
recession of the late 2000s.
That certainly wasn't a concern of theirs to begin with, though.
They bought themselves a gorgeous stone mansion in Yorkshire, England, where they lived with
their two young daughters.
Parked outside was Roger's slick Porsche convertible, which sat next to his wife's Lexus four-by-four.
Lara used 500 thousand pounds to start her own beauty salon.
On the other hand, Roger quit his steady job to be a stay-at-home dad and watch over the
family's finances.
When he wasn't doing the laundry or investing the winnings, he was practicing with his old
rock band, which got back together after Roger bought them all expensive new equipment.
But instead of becoming the rock star he always dreamed of, Roger soon found himself separated
from his wife, forced to move back in with his elderly parents, and with only 7 pounds
to his name.
What in the world went wrong?
It turns out Roger had been making some questionable investments with the lotto money they had
leftover after all their lavish spending.
He squandered the winnings, and the tanking economy made things even worse.
After Lara found emails suggesting Roger was cheating on her, the end of the Griffiths'
fairytale life had officially arrived.
Roger moved out and is no longer in contact with his wife and children as he tries to
salvage what little he has left.
Lara sold their dream home and her salon, where she still works to try and pay the bills
and support her daughters.
What started as an unbelievable stroke of good fortune ended up destroying an innocent
family's life, leaving them worse off than they were before.
5 - Jeffrey Dampier When you hear about lottery wins gone bad,
it's usually the case that reckless spending got the better of the lucky winners.
But for Jeff Dampier, his tragic story is an example of what happens when greed overtakes
the people around the winner, and their desire to get a slice of that cash pie overrides
all else.
Jeff and his ex-wife won $20 million from the Illinois lottery back in 1996.
When the couple got divorced, they split the winnings 50/50, and Jeff moved down to Tampa,
Florida, with his second wife, Crystal Jackson.
Jeff used a good chunk of the money that remained to open a popcorn company called Kassie's
Gourmet Popcorn, which he named after his daughter.
But he also wasn't shy about sharing his wealth with those around him.
He often treated his wife's family to generous gifts and even financially supported her two
sisters, Victoria and Terri.
How did they repay his generosity?
They took his life.
Victoria Jackson and her boyfriend Nathaniel came up with a nefarious plot to get their
hands on Jeff's winnings.
They asked him to help out with car troubles at their apartment.
When he got there, Nathaniel tied him up and demanded he fork over all his money.
In the end, Victoria shot her brother-in-law.
Rather than get a piece of the hefty jackpot, Victoria and Nathaniel both got hefty prison
sentences.
Multiple life sentences to be exact.
Jeff Dampier's story is a reminder that those around us, even family members, don't always
have the best intentions, especially when there's that much cash at stake.
4 - Susan Mullins Winning the lottery is hard enough.
Spending your winnings wisely is apparently even harder.
It also doesn't help when greedy collection agencies take you to court for all your worth.
Take Virginia lottery winner Suzanne Mullins, for example.
Suzanne won $4.2 million in 1993 after buying a ticket on a whim at a convenience store.
She vowed to be smart about the extra cash she was awarded, and claimed she would avoid
blowing through the money too quickly like so many lottery winners do.
The pot was split three ways between Suzanne, her husband, and her daughter, so the annual
payment she'd receive was roughly $47,000 once a year for 20 years.
Suzanne essentially had an entire year's salary coming in the mail every year.
That would prove pretty helpful to any family trying to pay their monthly bills, wouldn't
you say?
Well, in the end, Suzanne was not nearly as wise with her spending as she originally promised.
Just five years later, money had gotten so tight for her after exorbitant medical bills
related to her sick son-in-law.
She took out a loan from the People's Lottery Foundation, which lends financial aid to lottery
winners who need more cash than their annual payments allow.
The Foundation lent Suzanne $200,000, but the situation grew more complicated when the
lottery changed its rules about lump sums in 2000.
Now, winners could claim all their money at once instead of receiving yearly payments.
Suzanne elected to do just that, thinking she could pay back her loan and carry on with
her life.
The People's Lottery Foundation had a different opinion, claiming she violated the terms of
their agreement.
Since they were relying on the interest tied to her loan to make money, Susan paying it
back in bulk cut into their bottom line.
They took the lottery winner to court and gouged her for an additional $150,000 in penalties.
Suzanne, now drained of all her winnings, was now $150,000 in debt just a decade after
becoming an overnight millionaire.
3 - Denise Rossi After winning the lottery, things like smart
investments and trips to Las Vegas move to the top of the winner's to-do lists.
Denise Rossi, on the other hand, decided to get a divorce.
Just 11 days after winning $1.3 million from the California lottery, Denise abruptly ended
her marriage of 25 years.
The catch?
She didn't tell her husband, Thomas, that she had won the lottery.
She kept that rather important detail completely hidden during the legal proceedings.
Two years later, Thomas caught wind of his ex-wife's good fortune.
He got a letter in the mail from a company offering to pay lump sums to lottery winners.
There was just one problem: he didn't win the lottery.
Or so he thought.
Within days, he had uncovered his ex-wife's plot to hide the money she'd won while they
were still married, and he took her to court to get his rightful share of the cash.
Denise's greed and deception ended up costing her every penny she won from that lottery
ticket.
The judge, appalled by her behavior, ordered her to pay her ex-husband $60,000 a year for
the next 20 years.
Per California Marriage laws, lottery winnings are considered "communal funds" between spouses.
Thomas was entitled to half the money because she bought and cashed the ticket before they
were legally separated.
Her decision to keep her lottery winnings a secret from her husband of 25 years ironically
ended up ensuring he'd receive it all.
Ouch.
2 - Amanda Clayton You may have heard that winning the lottery
shouldn't change the way you spend your money or else the winnings will run out rather quickly.
It's why you often see winners choose to keep their jobs even with the influx of cash.
Michigan lottery winner Amanda Clayton took this advice to the extreme.
Even after receiving more than $700,000 from a winning lottery ticket, Clayton continued
applying for and receiving food stamps and unemployment benefits.
While still technically unemployed, the programs she was mooching off are designed to help
people who genuinely need the money.
She obviously didn't.
She was charged with food stamp fraud and put on temporary probation, but the story
only gets crazier from there.
Clayton had been engaged in a longtime feud with two of her neighbors, Candace Combs and
Victor Bartolo.
The battle apparently got so serious that Combs accused Clayton of hiring three hitmen
to go after her and Mr. Bartolo with the money she won.
While the lottery winner denied the accusation, two men were charged with assault concerning
the attack on her neighbors.
Clayton herself wasn't charged, but she did walk away with a few scrapes and bruises.
The feuding neighbors were the Hatfields and McCoys of Lincoln Park, Michigan, but their
dispute was never settled.
Clayton was found dead just a year after their physical altercation.
Details regarding her death are hard to come by, but it's been said that Amanda's lottery
winnings had dwindled before she died.
1 - Ken Proxmire All the way back in 1977, Ken Proxmire won
a million-dollar jackpot, which comes out to about 4.5 million in today's money.
By the start of 1981, Ken had filed for bankruptcy.
How did he burn through all that cash so fast?
Ken's story tells of unwise spending going completely unchecked.
Ken was set up to receive $50,000 a year for 14 years.
To him, that meant he could totally change his lifestyle to fit his newfound wealth.
He bought a new car, some fancy clothes, and moved his family from Detroit all the way
out to California, so he could live like the highroller he believed himself to be.
His dream was to own a bowling alley, but that dream proved too expensive even with
his lottery winnings.
He had to compromise, settling on a pool hall instead.
He opened the doors on his pool hall in December of 1977 and even launched three additional
outlet stores to sell pool tables.
However, his cross-country move, lavish spending, and business boom proved too much too fast.
Sales took a nosedive in the years that followed, and Ken found himself in the hole for business
loans and credit card debt that he couldn't afford to pay.
Apparently, pool tables weren't flying off the shelves like they used to.
The mounting financial pressure came to a head in 1981 when Ken officially filed for
bankruptcy.
He said he learned many valuable lessons from his mistake-filled past and even had plans
to write a book, though it's unclear whether that ever materialized.
The moral of Ken's story?
It's easier than you think to blow through a million dollars if you're not careful.
Just take it from Ken himself, who, when asked about his advice to future lottery winners,
said, "crawl into a hole and pull the top in."
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