Picture Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Day by day Beast/Getty/Reuters
Marie Holmes thought she was going to have a coronary heart assault when she realized she’d gained a $188-million Powerball jackpot. It was February 2015, and the 26-year-old single mom of 4 had just lately stop jobs at Walmart and McDonald’s to look after one in all her children, who has cerebral palsy. She and her youngsters had been residing in a cell dwelling in North Carolina along with her mom.
Holmes hardly ever performed the lotto—solely when there was money to spare. This time, $15 and 6 numbers modified her life: 11, 13, 25, 39, and 52, with a Powerball of 19.
Holmes advised a reporter with WECT, a neighborhood NBC affiliate, that she was “grateful that I can bless my children with one thing I didn’t have.”
“Your complete life is about to alter. How are you feeling about that?” the reporter requested Holmes in one in all her first TV interviews.
“I’m prepared for it,” Holmes answered. “I’m able to embrace the change.”
At this time, one other lucky soul has the prospect to snag an eye-watering $1.02 billion Mega Thousands and thousands reward and see their world completely reworked in a single day. It’s the third time within the recreation’s 20-year historical past that the prize is hitting ten figures.
However whereas some winners take a lump sum and experience off into the sundown, others appear to stay round within the headlines—for causes that aren’t at all times so fortunate.
Among the many most well-known instances of the curse of the lotto is that of Jack Whittaker, who gained a record-setting $315 million Powerball on Christmas night time in 2002. Then 55, the West Virginia businessman opted for a $113.4 million onetime payout and have become an on the spot celeb, basking within the gentle of TV cameras along with his household, which quickly fell aside. 4 and a half years later, Whittaker was crammed with remorse. “Since I gained the lottery, I believe there isn't any management for greed,” he advised ABC Information. “I believe in case you have one thing, there’s at all times another person that wishes it. I want I’d torn that ticket up.”
In that quick time, Whittaker’s spouse, Jewell, left him. His granddaughter Brandi Bragg, who was going to inherit his fortune, died at age 17. Bragg, who’d struggled with drug dependancy, was discovered dumped in a plastic tarp close to her boyfriend’s dwelling. “My granddaughter is lifeless due to the cash,” stated Whittaker, whose daughter Ginger died of most cancers in 2009.
Scandal after public scandal plagued him. Thieves stole a whole bunch of 1000's from his automobiles and residential, he was mired in authorized battles—together with with feminine on line casino workers who accused him of assault—and he fell into consuming and playing.
“I don’t have any pals,” Whittaker advised the Related Press in 2007. “Each pal that I’ve had, virtually, has needed to borrow cash or one thing and naturally, as soon as they borrow cash from you, you possibly can’t be pals anymore.”
Willie Seeley, who in 2013 gained about $4 million after splitting a $450-million jackpot with 15 coworkers, was adamant that he wouldn't endure such a destiny.
Again then, Seeley advised NBC that he was shifting to a secluded cabin full-time not just for his love of the nice outdoor, but in addition to keep away from freeloaders and actuality TV producers. He additionally purchased a shotgun for cover. His recommendation again then for charmed ticket holders? “Simply disappear. Get misplaced whilst you nonetheless can,” he advised the community, which is probably why The Day by day Beast couldn’t attain him Thursday. “The drama is nonstop.”
For Holmes, who additionally couldn't be reached for remark, the post-prize controversy included lawsuits from her ex-fiancé, Lamarr Andre McDow, and a neighborhood pastor who reportedly claimed she backed out of offering $1.5 million for a retreat middle. (The Day by day Beast couldn't affirm the pastor’s court docket filings.)
A yr after profitable thousands and thousands, she appeared on Iyanla, Repair My Life on the Oprah Winfrey Community, which filmed her TV remedy session at a plantation she’d bought. Within the present, Holmes revealed how her mansion was in disarray and the way she’d burned by way of thousands and thousands to pay McDow’s bail and fund his companies, and bankrolled allowances for family.
Final yr, McDow sued Holmes, claiming she’d offered off his automotive enterprise and automobiles and gave away different objects he says she had bought for him as presents forward of his jail sentence for trafficking narcotics.
Earlier than the case was dismissed, Holmes’ lawyer filed a memorandum that warned: “This case is the embodiment of the phrase ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my very own. The issue right here, nevertheless, is that McDow has nothing of his personal.”
Courtroom brawls in wake of multimillion-dollar windfalls, and even lesser playing prizes, are nothing new. In Might, a Canadian pizza supply driver sued 16 of his pals for leaving him out of their lotto pool, which gained $1 million. “Why wouldn’t they inform me they gained?” the driving force, Philip Tsotsos of Windsor, Ontario, requested CBC. “These guys are like household to me.”
In the meantime, on Vancouver Island, two girls are suing their sister Lisa Turnbull over their late mom Frances Lloyd’s $3 million jackpot gained in 2021. In keeping with the Vancouver Solar, Lloyd deliberate to bestow some cash upon her household and purchase a brand new home, however she died at age 78 on Jan. 2 with out leaving a will and testomony.
Turnbull, in an affidavit, says her mom gave her and her husband $1 million to precise gratitude for his or her companionship, as she was Lloyd’s major caregiver. “She stated she was ‘snug’ with the steadiness of the account going to me upon her dying,” Turnbull claimed of her mom’s needs, the Solar reported.
Such household feuds over high-profile paydays are quite a few. In 2012, Etta Might Urquhart sued her personal son and accused him of claiming her $51 million Mega Thousands and thousands ticket as his personal, placing thousands and thousands in accounts out of her management, and shopping for 10 vehicles and 4 properties. They reached a confidential settlement within the matter one yr later.
Gloria Mackenzie of Florida filed a lawsuit towards her son in 2019, when she was 90, for allegedly mismanaging her $278 million rating, which supposedly resulted in a $10 million loss. When Mackenzie gained in 2013, it was the biggest jackpot in Powerball historical past at $590.5 million. She claimed her son, who had energy of lawyer over her funds, had enlisted a bunch of a monetary speak radio present to speculate her cash.
Pennsylvania state lotto winner William “Bud” Publish III was additionally bedeviled with litigation and even an tried hit job by his personal brother. “All people goals of profitable cash, however no one realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork, or the issues,” Publish stated simply 5 years after his lotto bonanza in an interview with the AP.
Publish, who’d labored as a circus and carnival driver, prepare dinner, and painter, had $2.46 in his checking account when he bought his profitable ticket price $16.2 million in 1988. He selected annual funds of roughly $500,000 relatively than a lump sum.
After cashing in, Publish confronted a stream of misfortunes, together with a lawsuit from a landlord who obtained a 3rd of his jackpot, an assault conviction, and chapter. His brother, Jeffrey Publish of Sarasota, Florida, was arrested in 1993 and later convicted of making an attempt to enlist a hitman to kill Bud and his spouse and make it seem like a murder-suicide.
“The obvious motive for the (tried) deaths was financial achieve,” police stated in an announcement, based on a Pittsburgh Publish-Gazette report. “(Jeffrey) Publish’s brother gained a Pennsylvania lottery and apparently was reluctant to share it.”
For Florida winner Abraham Shakespeare, the lottery in the end price him his life.
The Lakeland sanitation employee, who was reportedly illiterate and dropped out of college in eighth grade, was 41 when he gained a $31 million state jackpot in 2006 and took dwelling a virtually $17 million lump sum. Quickly after, a coworker claimed Shakespeare stole the profitable ticket and sued him however a jury sided with Shakespeare in 2007.
Following this victory, Shakespeare advised the Tampa Tribune he would possibly lastly get some peace. “I need to have the ability to flip the cellphone fully off and never have to fret about any cellphone calls,” he stated. “My purpose is to have the ability to get up within the morning, get a fishing pole and go fish. Or go looking. Or golfing. I ain’t by no means golfed earlier than.”
Shakespeare would squander his funds over the following couple years, paying off pals’ and family’ mortgages or in any other case giving his cash away—till he vanished in 2009.
A cousin reported him lacking that November, although he was final seen in April, based on The Ledger, a day by day newspaper in Lakeland, which reported that Shakepeare’s $1 million dwelling and different actual property holdings or mortgages had been offered or transferred to a medical staffing firm owned by a lady named Dorice Donegan “Dee Dee” Moore.
She rapidly turned an individual of curiosity in Shakespeare’s disappearance. Moore advised reporters Shakespeare was hiding out as a result of acquaintances have been typically begging him for cash. She additionally claimed to be writing a guide in regards to the lotto winner.
In January 2010, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd advised the media that he feared Shakespeare was lifeless, noting, “There are a variety of odd and weird circumstances on this case.”
Cops discovered Shakepeare’s physique later that month, buried beneath a concrete slab in a rural yard of a property Moore owned. He had been shot twice within the chest.
Moore was arrested that February and later charged with first-degree homicide. A jury convicted her in connection to Shakepeare’s dying in 2012.
Robert Brown, Shakespeare’s brother, advised the Related Press that his sibling regretted shopping for his golden ticket.
“‘I’d have been higher off broke.’ He stated that to me on a regular basis.”