Image via Complex Original
It's often wondered if money can buy you happiness. While we're pretty certain that buying a lot of cool stuff would make us very happy, that wasn't necessarily the case for this bunch of people who, after winning a ton of money in the lottery, ended up broker than they were when they began. Some of them spent it all on stupid shit—well, actually, most of them spent it on stupid shit, which is sad because you'd hope that if they've won the lottery and lost it all, the least they could walk away with is a hoverboard or a jet pack or a Delorean or something. Oh well.
Winning the lottery is such a phenomenon that the TLC series Lottery Changed My Life (Mondays, 9 p.m.) even chronicles it, although, granted, they don''t really feature the winners who end up penniless in the end. The lottery changes their lives too, yes, just...not in a good way.
For your reading pleasure, though, we've chronicled the absolute 10 Worst Lottery Win Disasters. Read it to make yourself feel better about your own life, to inspire yourself to budget your finances better, or just to procrastinate at your under-paying day job!
Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@TanyaGhahremani)
10. Callie Rogers
When Callie Rogers was 16, she was just another normal teen living in the UK. Then she won the lottery (about £1.9 million, which at the time was roughly $3 million, to be exact). If you're currently thinking that 16 is far too young to be dealing with that much money at once, you're completely right, because shortly after receiving her cash prize, Callie went on a spending spree and threw her hardly-hard-earned cash at everything from clothes to vacations to parties to breast enhancements. Oh, and cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine, which is a pretty expensive drug, so you can kinda see why she's on this list.
Six years later, she was completely broke and in debt. She'd attempted to take her own life twice—the stress of handling and ultimately losing that much money too much for her—and was ultimately forced to take a job as a maid to support herself and her two children (by a baby-daddy who allegedly tried to steal her money).
Basically, if you ever find yourself mulling over the thought that perhaps the strict 18-plus age minimum on playing the lottery in the U.S. is a bit too high, this is why they set it.
9. Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
When Billie Bob Harrell Jr. won $31 million in the Texas lottery back in 1997, he was a former Pentecoastal preacher working as a bag boy in a Home Depot. The win seemed, for lack of a better term, heaven-sent, but the outcome was hardly that.
He bought himself a few things, like a home and cars and things of that nature, but he ended up loaning out a lot of his money to so-called friends and family who came out of the woodwork upon hearing of his newfound riches. No surprise, he never received any of the money back, and he was broke within two years. Sadly, Harrell committed suicide in 1999, only 20 months after initially winning the lottery. Hopefully his "friends and family" feel some guilt about it.
8. Michael Carroll
The story goes as follows: Michael Carroll, a 19-year-old British garbageman, wins about $15 million in the lottery. He begins spending innocently enough—presents for family and friends, for instance. Then, he begins spending not so innocently on things like crack cocaine, gambling, prostitutes (at one point sleeping with about four a day), and enough booze to drown the sad midday crowd at an Irish pub. Eight years later, he's broke and back to working as a garbageman. According to him, he's happier for it, but we kind of think he's just saying that because he's lost it all.
7. Janite Lee
Janite Lee decided to be generous with her money when she won $18 million in the lottery in 1993, which is a nice thought that rarely turns out well. (This is why we don't do nice things!) She donated much of her money to government-related programs and political organizations (Ron Swanson would be appalled), and even broke bread with former President Bill Clinton thanks to her contributions. She dropped $1 million on Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. to allow them to build a new library, which is named after her.
Lee also gambled a lot, so you can see how this was not a good combination. She blew about $347,000 in a year on her habit, and ended up deep in debt to the point where she filed for bankruptcy in in 2001.
6. William "Bud" Post
William "Bud" Post was unfortunately the victim of the common phenomenon that lottery winners have to go through: Family members coming out of the woodwork assuming that they are entitled to a chunk of the cash that was won for no reason other than that they are related.
When Post won $16.2 million in the lottery, his girlfriend sued him for some of his winnings, actually winning her case. His brother attempted to hire a hitman to kill him so that he could get the money for himself—it was unsuccessful, but still, hello crazy. His other siblings persuaded him to make bad investments that left him $1 million in debt and living off social security checks at the time of his death. Makes you question your loyalty to the people you call "family."
5. Alex and Rhoda Toth
Married couple Alex and Rhoda Toth won the lottery in 1990, when they were literally broke. The prize was $13 million, and they opted to receive it in payments of $666,666 a year for 20 years, until 2010, which, all things considered, is the smartest move a lottery winner can make. Despite their good intentions, however, things did not work out for them.
They briefly lived it up in Vegas before deciding that the lavish life was not for them, and they returned to their home state of Florida to buy some land and a home. Unfortunately, they were broke by 2006 due to court fees—winning the money had caused a rift in the family that resulted in tons of legal drama and expenses. Alex was even arrested numerous times for growing marijuana plants and for writing bad checks between 2002 and 2005. They were down to living in a tiny trailer on a half-acre of land, their only source of electricity coming from a wire connected to their car's engine.
When they were caught in 2006 for tax evasion, Alex died while awaiting trial and Rhoda claimed that she was too ill to stand trial herself. Turns out, she lied about that too, and when video surfaced of her moving around just fine she was sentenced to two years in prison. And she has to pay $1.1 million to the IRS.
4. Alex Ahsoak
Alex Ahsoak won about $500,000 in the lottery to benefit his nonprofit organization, a group that aided victims of sexual abuse. Good, right?
Not really, 'cause Alex Ahsoak was a sexual offender himself. He molested two girls under the age of 13, one in 1993 and one in 2000, and no one actually knew this until he won the jackpot and the media dug up the info. Not too long later, Ahsoak was attacked while walking down the street, and hit repeatedly in the head with a pipe that left him severely injured. And the iron fist of karma strikes again.
3. Jack Whittaker
When Jack Whittaker won the lottery, he didn't really need the money; he was already worth a little over $1 million thanks to his contracting firm, and had a pretty comfortable life in West Virginia. Still, that's not to say that when he won $315 million from a multi-state Powerball, the biggest prize ever given to a winner, the money wasn't welcome. He used it to build churches, donated 10% of his winnings to Christian charities, and even started his own foundation with $14 million called, rather uncreatively, the Jack Whittaker Foundation.
But, he wouldn't be on this list if things turned out well for him. He was robbed at one point, thieves taking about $500,000 from his car parked outside of a strip club (Where did he even put it, on the passenger's seat?) and he was arrested for drunk driving on one occasion and threatening a bar manager on another. He became an alcoholic, and he divorced his wife. His granddaughter, who he'd been supplying with a weekly allowance of $2,100, died of a drug overdose more or less funded by his checks.
Whittaker later said that he wishes he'd torn the ticket up.
2. Jeffrey Dampier
Jeffrey Dampier had good intentions with his money, he really did. Once he won about $20 million from the Illinois lottery, he actually invested it in a gourmet popcorn store, called Kassie's Gormet Popcorn. Fair enough, right? Totally.
Well, his sister-in-law didn't seem to think so. Along with her boyfriend, who undoubtedly had dollar signs in his eyes, they shot Dampier in the back of the head with a shotgun seven years after he won, and left him in the back of a van, intending to take his money. They were obviously caught, however, and convicted of murder, and now they're in jail for life.
Trust no one.
1. Evelyn Adams
Winning the lottery once is one thing. The odds are astronomical at best, and it's sort of like being hit by lightning (with a pot of gold at the end of it or something). Normally, if it does happen to a person, it never happens again.
For Evelyn Adams of New Jersey, however, it did happen twice, in 1985 and 1986. She won about $5.4 million total and, instead of thinking that maybe it was a sign that she should put it away or invest it or something, Adams thought it'd be a great idea to spend it all gambling in nearby Atlantic City. A little over 20 years later, she found herself broke and living in a less-than-lavish trailer park.
The moral of this story, guys? If you're batshit insane lucky to win the lottery twice, at least only blow one of the checks on whatever stupid shit you want.