Why Winning The Lottery Is The Worst Thing That Can Happen To You

Why Winning The Lottery Is The Worst Thing That Can Happen To You

12 Real Stories

This article is about winning the Lottery and different consequences of that. We will investigate why winning the Lottery is the worst thing that can happen to you.

In the USA, your odds of winning the lottery jackpot is around 1 in 292.2 million. If you spent 80 years buying the Mega Millions lottery twice a week, you’d still be more likely to get struck by lightning than go home with some money (winning the Lottery). You’re also statistically more likely to date a supermodel, win an Oscar, have identical quadruplets, become an Olympic athlete, get eaten by a shark, and even become a Saint in the Catholic Church rather than winning the Lottery.

And thank god that’s the case - Because sometimes winning the lottery is less like a blessing and more like a truly horrific curse. Financial ruin, drug addiction, social isolation, and even being murdered by someone close to you are suddenly on the cards. Don’t believe us? Here are some horrifying stories of people who had their lives ruined by hitting the jackpot, which we’ll use to go a little deeper into why the lottery might lead you from riches to rags.

In this content, we will discuss below individuals:

Also, below states and countries are going to be investigated:

• USA
• Chicago
• Georgia
• West Virginia
• Canada
• Florida
• Ontario
• Sweden
• UK

1. Abraham Shakespeare

Let’s begin with the tragic tale of a man whose name was as awesome as his luck was terrible: Florida Lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare. Mr. Shakespeare netted a 30 million dollar win in 2006, a life-changing amount of money - in the worst way possible. He was a complicated man. Before his sudden influx of wealth, he was an assistant truck driver who lived with his mother, had a criminal history, and could barely read and write.

After getting rich overnight and winning the Lottery, Shakespeare moved to a fancy gated community and bought nice cars and a Rolex—as many of us would if we became multi-millionaires overnight. Shakespeare was notoriously generous with his money, something that a con woman named Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore was eager to take advantage of. She approached him under the pretense that she wanted to write a book about his life, but she had much more sinister intentions.

Through a business she started with Shakespeare, Abraham Shakespeare LLC, she siphoned off over a million dollars of the man’s winnings, but it didn’t stop there. In 2009, Shakespeare was reported missing by his family, and in 2010, his body would be discovered buried behind the house. As you probably guessed by this point, he’d been murdered - And the prime suspect in this murder was his toxic business partner, Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore.

After a lengthy trial, Dee Dee was eventually convicted of Shakespeare’s murder and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Shakespeare’s brother, Robert Brown, was quoted saying, "'I'd have been better off broke.' He said that to me all the time.” Shakespeare had no idea how right he was. Even though Shakespeare was murdered, at least some justice was able to be served in the end.

2. Urooj Khan

The same cannot be said for the mysterious, lottery-related death of Chicago’s Urooj Khan, who won $425,000. However, he’d never actually live to see the money, as in the process of collecting it, Khan mysteriously dropped dead. A truly random tragedy - Perhaps the 46-year-old’s heart had simply given out from the excitement of winning this life-changing money. It meant a lot to him, as he said, “Winning the lottery means everything to me.”

However, after his loved ones came forward and asked for the Cook County Medical Examiner, Stephen Cina, to reopen the case. This was the point when they discovered that the cause of Khan’s death wasn’t so natural: He’d died after ingesting a fatal dose of cyanide, only made worse by Khan’s dangerously clogged arteries.

However, because the autopsy was made six months after Khan’s death, and because, following Muslim traditions, he hadn’t been embalmed, his body was in too deep a state of decomposition to learn any more about how Khan had ingested the cyanide. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know, but one thing seems clear: That Khan would somehow ingest a fatal quantity of cyanide just after winning the lottery seems too perfect to be a coincidence.

Either way, winning the lottery certainly didn’t improve Urooj Khan’s life. While both of these stories are unquestionably tragic, the next one is downright disturbing:

3. Craigory Burch Jr.

We’re talking about the fate that befell 20-year-old forklift operator Craigory Burch Jr after winning the Lottery (the $400,000 jackpot) in 2015, the first domino in a brief and upsetting series of events that would end Burch Jr.’s life.

Upon hearing about Craigory’s windfall, a gang of seven men led by a gang member named Dabrentise Overstreet - a name to rival Abraham Shakespeare - decided they wanted some of that money, even if it meant using lethal force. Two months after the win, without warning, they shot through the door of Craigory’s Georgia home and stormed in, guns blazing, as Craigory was holding his two-year-old child. His girlfriend, Jasmine Hendricks, was also in the room during the holdup.

Craigory pleaded for the life of his girlfriend and child, begging, “Don’t do it, bro. Don’t do it in front of my kids. Please don’t do it in front of my kids and old lady. I’ll give you my bank card.” But this wasn’t enough. He tried to take off and give his pants to the robbers when he couldn’t find his wallet, but they shot him in both legs in their frustration before fleeing.

This would be bad enough, but they came back soon after and finished the job, murdering Craigory in front of his girlfriend and infant child. The men were caught and convicted, but this would be little comfort to Jasmine and the child, who’d lost a partner and a father, all because they’d come into some money that local criminals were eager to steal. After this tragic incident for winning the Lottery, the Georgia Lottery started letting its winners choose to remain anonymous.

If only they’d provided this option sooner, Craigory might still be with us.

This article is about winning the Lottery and different consequences of that. Stay with us.

4. Andrew “Jack” Whittaker

Next, we have one of the most infamous unlucky lottery winners of all time: Andrew “Jack” Whittaker. This West Virginia man was the president of Diversified Enterprises Construction and was hardly a pauper - He already had a net worth of around seventeen million dollars. However, this was small potatoes compared to the epic win he was about to get on the Powerball: An utterly insane $314.9 million.

It was the largest amount of money ever won on an American lottery ticket, so naturally, it would have some legendary lore attached to it, too. Initially, things seemed to be going well. After winning the Lottery, he gave generously to charity, even creating his charitable foundation. He gave a large sum of money to the owner of the convenience store where he bought the winning ticket.

He even drove around his neighborhood, throwing handfuls of cash out of the window for anyone who happened to be walking by. Life was good, but that goodness wouldn’t last for long. Half a million dollars were robbed from Jack’s car while he was visiting a strip club. This would be the only successful attempt of three different incidents where greedy strangers conspired to rob Jack of his winnings.

But the tragedy of this pales in comparison to the death of Jack’s beloved granddaughter, 17-year-old Brandi Bragg, who died of a drug overdose under mysterious circumstances. Many years later, Jack’s daughter and Brandi’s mother, Ginger Whittaker Bragg, was found dead in her West Virginia home under tragic circumstances. Jack just couldn’t win.

On top of these personal struggles, winning the Lottery also brought him a myriad of legal troubles. Caesars Atlantic City Casino even sued him for bouncing $1.5 million worth of checks to cover gambling losses, which led to a longer legal dispute between him and the casino. He also dealt with a DUI in 2003 and even had his house burn down in 2016.

The seemingly endless unlucky street of Jack Whittaker would come to a close in June of 2020 when he passed away after suffering from a long illness. It’s one of the few misfortunes that seem to have nothing to do with his lottery winnings.

5. Sandra Hayes

Returning to Sandra Hayes from earlier, she was almost the victim of a con from a guilt-tripping friend, who claimed she was about to lose her house due to being unable to pay three years of back taxes. Just before Sandra could help her friend out on this, she decided to do some due diligence and check public tax records related to her friend - Finding out that all of her taxes had been paid in full.

When Sandra confronted her friend about this, their relationship quickly broke down. And as you’ve seen, this is still one of the more mild stories to come out of lottery misfortune. That being said, sometimes the call is coming from inside the house. The term “Sudden Wealth Syndrome” is often applied to people who spin out after becoming unexpectedly rich overnight without having any pre-existing wealth management knowledge.

6. Nicolas Cage

We’ve all heard stories of celebrities like Nicolas Cage splurging on castles and dinosaur bones, and when the average person becomes as well off as Nic Cage without needing to star in National Treasure first, there’s a tendency to go even crazier with the metaphorical checkbook. You’ve seen it in the stories - Luxury cars, mega-mansions, and sadly, lots and lots of drugs.

7. Willie Hurt

This was the case for the unfortunately named Willie Hurt, who blew all of his 1989 3.1 million dollar jackpot on crack cocaine. It’s the true meaning of the phrase “Easy come, easy go” - Money won rather than earned seems to lend itself to more frivolous spending, soon landing the winner in a deeper hole than they’d started in before the money ever found its way into their hands.

Evelyn Adams was lucky enough to win the lottery twice, once in 1985 and 1986, and allegedly blew all 4.5 million dollars of her winnings in Casinos in Atlantic City.

8. Gerald Muswagon

Canada’s Gerald Muswagon got it even worse in 1998 when he won ten million dollars on the Super 7 jackpot and decided to party it all down the drain. According to Canada’s Globe and Mail: “He bought several new vehicles for himself and friends, purchased a house that turned into a nightly 'party pad', and often celebrated his new lifestyle with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. In a single day, he bought eight big-screen televisions for friends.”

His rampant partying and a series of bad investments in an unprofitable logging company soon resulted in his new fortune collapsing. After being forced into heavy labor just to make ends meet, he ended up taking his own life in 2005.

9. Michael Carroll

It’s a slightly more tragic version of the experience of the UK’s Michael Carroll, a garbageman who ended up winning the equivalent of fifteen million dollars at only 19. He ended up blowing all this money on his insane number of vices: Crack cocaine, parties, prostitutes, and luxury cars.

That fifteen million was turned into a big, fat zero in a mere five years, and Michael worked in sanitation again. On the subject of impulse buying, one former winner said, “After we won the lottery, we bought an eight-bedroom, seven-bath, 10,000-square-foot mansion because we could, and it sounded amazing. Well, now we’re selling the eight-bedroom, seven-bath mansion because it’s impractical for a family of four.” With that, let’s return to some of the horrifying stories of unlucky people whose lotteries condemned them to lives of misery and woe.

It takes a lot of work to maintain a healthy relationship. Love, compassion, honesty, respect, and communication are all essential for making it work - And few things test all of that better than a sudden windfall of $750,000 after a big lottery win.

Thanks to the stories of winners like Sandra Hayes, it’s easy to see why some people want to keep their winnings close to their chests, but sometimes this can create even bigger problems. Just ask Lynn Anne Poirier.

10. Lynn Anne Poirier

Poirier and her partner Howard Browning were into the lottery to an unusual degree. The Florida couple bought tickets as often as they could, working under the verbal contract that if ever one of them won, they’d split the winnings in half, fair and square.

But that’s an easy deal to make when you haven’t won yet. When Poirier made off well on the Florida Lottery’s Firecracker Millionaire Raffle, she disappeared for a month with the full 750K, to the disappointment and horror of Howard. What followed six months later was a heated legal battle between Lynn and Howard, litigating in the Florida trial court, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal, and even the Florida Supreme Court.

This article is about winning the Lottery and different consequences of that. Stay with us.

The meat of the argument was based on whether or not Lynn needed to honor a verbal contract - And in the end, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that she did. It was a win for Howard, but that win didn’t leave him much better off. Lynn Anne Poirier claimed that she’d already spent the money and declared bankruptcy, which Howard contested.

The lottery winnings brought the couple nothing but strife. Lottery winnings can tear apart domestic partners - But surely they can’t break the unstoppable bond between brothers, right?

11. William "Bud" Post

Nope, wrong! Just get in a time machine and ask William "Bud" Post, who won over sixteen million dollars in the Pennsylvania Lottery back in 1988. Within a year of his big win, it wasn’t just all gone - He was a million dollars in debt.

A third of his winnings were sued out of him by an ex-girlfriend, and the majority of the rest was sunken into an unsuccessful family business. But if this wasn’t bad enough for Bud, his brother was arrested for allegedly hiring a hitman to kill him so he could get a portion of the money. Bud would later also end up in jail for firing a gun over the head of a bill collector hoping to right some of Bud’s many debts. He said of the whole horrible experience, “I wish it never happened.

It was a nightmare. I was much happier when I was broke.” There’s one thing worse than a family member attempting to murder you for your lottery winnings:

12. Ibi Roncaioli

A family member succeeding in murdering you for your lottery winnings, as was the case for Ibi Roncaioli of Ontario back in 1991. Ibi won five million dollars on a lottery draw and ended up giving 2 million dollars of those winnings to a secret child that she’d had with someone else. Her jealous husband, Joseph Roncaioli, poisoned her to death with painkillers when he found out about the money. Just another casualty of the lottery.

You can also watch this video regarding winning the lottery:

Why is winning the lottery the worst thing that can happen to you?

Why is winning the lottery the worst thing that can happen to you?

As much as people - and generally, annoying people who are comfortably wealthy already - will tell you that money can’t buy happiness, there are plenty of problems in our lives that feel like they could be solved overnight by suddenly becoming a multi-million or even billionaire.

We’d never need to worry about food or shelter; we could pay off any outstanding bills, debts, or student loans, and we could leave the rat race and relax, using our newfound mega bucks to live our dreams and donate to causes and charities we believe in.

So what’s the problem here? Why does life-changing money (winning the lottery) so often seem to change people’s lives for the worse? Of course, there are plenty of people who win the lottery and go on to live happy, successful lives. We just explained all the anxiety-inducing problems that just seem to vanish when lottery winners spend their winnings responsibly after winning the lottery.

You may have heard the statistic that 70% of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years of their big win - But this is a piece of commonly repeated misinformation based on a 2001 symposium organized by the National Endowment on Financial Education.

A data point you probably haven’t heard of is the results of a 2020 study conducted in collaboration between Stockholm University, Stockholm School of Economics, and New York University that had a sample of 3000 Swedish Lottery Winners, surveying their lives from five to 22 years after their big winning the lottery. The result?

The researchers found that the winners had “sustained increases in overall life satisfaction.” But why? Why do we lust over horror stories of lottery wins gone bad when the stories of lottery winnings drastically improving people’s lives seem to go unnoticed?

Winning the lottery is astronomically unlikely. Despite these odds, 181 million people play Powerball every year, even though so many of these people, statistically, will never, ever, ever win. And we’ve seen the number of players rising as it seems like the economy is designed to do less and less than the average person.

For many, it seems like the lottery is the only way to escape the horrors of poverty and debt. But again, most people simply will not get a lottery win. This makes it a more pleasing narrative to believe that the winners are worse off than the losers - That we’re the lucky ones for not winning tho lottery.

It’s just less painful than thinking that the ladder out of struggle can be accessed by so few. But why do some of those few spin out into tragedy, even if, statistically, the people whose lives are destroyed are actually in the minority? Of course, the lottery can change how others see you—and even worse, how they behave towards you.

Some lottery winners have reported distant relatives they haven’t talked to in years or ones they haven’t talked to at all—like their fourth cousin three times removed, Count Olaf—trying to get a piece of their new fortune. And how could you turn down a family member? They’re flesh and blood, after all! But it won’t stop there, of course. Been meaning to get in contact with some old friends? Don’t worry - After your big lottery win, they might try to contact you again.

And, of course, they’ll be very interested in getting closely acquainted with you and might even tell you about some of their money troubles lately over a few drinks. And you want to be a good friend, don’t you? You’ll likely feel obligated to pay off these debts just to be a considerate pal. Oh, did you think it would stop there?

We’re sorry to disappoint you - Because when the news of winning the lottery went public, stock brokers and investing consultants may also get in touch - Telling you about brilliant projects and miracle stocks that just so happen to be once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunities, ready to be given a cash injection by a newly minted baller like you. They’ll tell you these opportunities will likely double - no, triple! - your current fortune, though it may leave you a lot worse off than you started.

The same can be said for charities and philanthropic opportunities. We don’t want you to think we’re being cold-hearted here. It’s good to give to charities—if you can afford it and if those charities are ethical—but when you win the lottery, representatives of various charities may become travel agents who specialize in sending you on a guilt trip.

Who knows how much of your lucky winnings you’ll give away to take the weight off your heart?

In an interview, the 2006 Missouri Lottery winner Sandra Hayes once said, “I had to endure the greed and the need people have, trying to get you to release your money to them. That caused a lot of emotional pain. These are people who you’ve loved deep down, and they’re turning to vampires, trying to suck the life out of me.”

Though it’s better to have the life sucked out of you in a purely metaphorical sense than to have it snuffed out by people who want to get their hands on your money. As we’ve sadly seen in a lot of our examples, there are just as many people who’d happily murder you if it meant getting a slice of your lottery-won pie or, at the very least, robbing you blind without a second thought.

This is the end of our article about the terrible results of winning the lottery. If you have other opinions, tell us in the comments.

Also, you can check This about the sad consequences of winning the lottery.