Millions of people participate in lottery games every day and all around the world. The dream is always to win big. Everybody hopes that hitting the jackpot would change the winner’s life for better. There are many stories about lottery winners and how money took them to a new world.
Source: Listopedia – YouTube
Let’s explore the stories of some lucky, but not so brainy, lottery winners. Below are summaries of the stories from that video.
Stories about 10 stupid lottery winners.
10. Lou Eisenberg (0:14)
Lou Eisenberg won a record-breaking $5 Million in 1981. In 2009, he was 81 years old living in a mobile home in Florida. Lou lost all his money between alimony payments to his ex-wives and losing high-stake bets at the horse-racing tracks. The lottery winner claimed in multiple interviews that never regretted enjoying life to the fullest.
9 – Etta May Urquhart (0:54)
Etta May Urquhart won an astonishing $51 Million in 2011 at the age of 70. The only, but critical, mistake that Ms Urquhart made was trusting her son Orender to sign the lottery ticket instead of her. The son didn’t sign her name because that would have been illegal. Instead, he convinced her that the name and signature on the ticket wouldn’t make a big difference. Signing the ticket made Etta’s son the official winner.
Orender promised Etta that he was going to take good care of her. However, as soon as he got the $32 Million, he started spending the money to his liking. The son bought his mother an SUV, gave her around $120 thousands and paid some of her expenses. Etta wasn’t satisfied with that and decided to sue him for the full amount, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and financial abuse. Her efforts were unsuccessful and Orender enjoyed the lottery jackpot.
8 – Vivian Nicholson (2:01)
In 1961, a British coal miner, the second husband of Vivian, won £152,319 in the English Football bets. The amount of money he won is equivalent to £3,362,478.00 today. The couple told the media they were going to “spend and spend and spend” and they kept their word.
Keith and Vivian led a chaotic life before the husband died in a car accident in 1965. Vivian had to relocate to Malta following a clash with the police. She remarried as well; another husband who found the same fate as good old Keith dying in a car accident as well. Vivian was addicted to alcohol, drugs, and spending. She died of a stroke at the age of 79 after suffering from dementia.
7 – Gerald Muswagon (3:05)
Gerald was a Canadian lottery winner from Winnipeg. He makes a great example of how something as good as winning the lottery can turn out to be so bad. In 1998, Gerald won $10.000.000 in the LottoSuper7 lottery in Canada. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to adjust to the great change in his life. Gerald spent all his money in less than 4 years. He bought a huge house where the party, the drugs and alcohol never ended.
Gerald’s new life resulted in multiple arrests for sexual assault. He even got sentenced to spend some time in prison. A few years after winning the lottery, Gerald went broke and got back to working in a minimum-wage heavy lifting job. On October 2nd, 2005, he decided to put an end to his life in his parent’s garage putting a very sad ending to his story.
6 – Jamie and Abbie Hort (4:02)
In 2014 this British couple won £50000 in the Channel Islands Lottery. Not so long after collecting the amount they won, the unemployed couple started spending on holidays, designer clothes, and expensive furniture. It didn’t take them more than 8 months to run out of cash and apply for social assistance unsuccessfully.
In an interview with Dailymail, Abbie said “They want to see receipts from the statements as they don’t believe all the money has gone. The whole money went in eight months but they don’t believe us.” Jamie and Abbie couldn’t afford to pay for their new expensive home so they got evicted.
5 – John Ross Jr. (5:02)
In March 2012, John won a lottery game called “SetForLife” in California. The game promises the winner $70000 every year for 20 years. Ross thought that would change his life. Soon after the lottery win, Ross had to bail himself out of prison after being linked with the theft of a Honda Civic.
Ironically, Ross told the press covering his win that the first thing he plans to buy was a car. He told one of the reporters “I’m 29, and I’ve never had a car. There’s something wrong there.”
4 – Lara and Roger Griffiths (5:47)
In 2005, this British couple won a breathtaking £1.831.492. That’s more than enough to spend for a lifetime but that would require some brains. Unfortunately, Lara and Roger came short of that. In 2013, there was nothing left for them to spend except £7. In order to know how that happened, please refer to the title of this article.
The couple blamed everyone they knew except themselves. The money was spent in every possible direction; real estate, failed investments, plastic surgery, holidays, cars, and expensive furniture…etc
Not only the lottery money that ended for Lara and Roger. The couple’s marriage also came to an end. Roger had an affair and disappeared. Luckily for Lara, British tabloid The Dailymail paid her some money to share her sad story.
3 – David Lee Edwards (6:50)
David won $27 Million Powerball jackpot. After no more than 12 years, he died completely broke. Alone in hospice care aged 58. David drained his bank account spending loads of money on drugs and uncalculated expenses. The lottery winner lost his house and had to relocate, with his wife, to a storage unit covered with feces. Shawna divorced David and remarried. But David couldn’t turn his life around.
2 – Matt Myles (7:30)
In 2014, British Matt Myles won £1 Million. Instead of paying his credit debt, he had other plans. Matt took his brother and some of his friends on a 7-month round-the-world trip. According to the Mirror Matt spent £70000 on alcohol alone. When he came back, he couldn’t even get a mortgage on a house.
1 – The Mukhametzyanov Family (8:10)
This family was considered the Russian Slumdog Millionaires when they won $1.000.000 in the lottery. Unfortunately for them, like everyone on this article, they went broke in no more than 15 years. How did they do that? They bought a super expensive apartment in Ufa, spent a crazy amount of money buying cheap Vodka, and gave to beggars on the street. Yes, they weren’t brainy but at least they were charitable. When their lottery money ended, the Mukhametzyanov Family realized they don’t have enough money to buy groceries anymore. Eventually, the head of the family got back to working as a roofer.
