Lotto winners' luck runs out when cashflow starts

Thursday, October 19, 2006 posted 04:25 AM EDT

Washington - When lottery jackpots rise, it's not unusual for people who never or only seldom gamble to be lured into a place to bet.

'You wouldn't believe how many people who come in here to play are doing it for the first time,' said a clerk at a newsstand in Munich. Lottery fever gripped Germany recently when the jackpot rose to a record 35 million euros (44 million dollars).

It's not uncommon for jackpot winners to have little or no experience with wealth, and for some, their luck turns sour as soon as they receive their first payout.

There are numerous 'hard luck' stories among lottery winners, particularly in the US where it's not unusual for multistate jackpots to reach triple digits. About one-third of the people who win big jackpots sooner or later end up broke, according to the Financial Planner Board of Standards, a financial planning organization.

Lottery riches have preceded the collapse of families, violence within families and lawsuits. Worst of all, people have been killed, threatened and robbed. After blowing their money, many of the winners are left friendless.

Winning 314 million dollars in 2002 on a 1-dollar bet turned out to be a curse for Jewell Whittacker of West Virginia. He can still claim to be the winner of the biggest single-payout jackpot in US history, but it's a title he'd rather not hold considering the hardships that befell him afterward.

Whittacker describes his life as nothing less than a nightmare since the lottery windfall. Not long after winning the jackpot, the Whittackers became the frequent target of thieves. Their home, cars and offices were broken into, and hundreds of thousands of dollars disappeared.

Whittacker was caught several times driving drunk, and last July he was in court charged with violently assaulting a bartender. In May, he reached a settlement with a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her. He has been banned from two casinos that accused him of writing bad cheques, and a man whose son died of a drug overdose on Whittacker's property has sued him. Worst of all, he lost his most beloved granddaughter to a drug overdose.

William 'Bud' Post III of Pennsylvania, who won 16.2 million dollars in 1993, died suddenly early this year in a state of desperation and grief. Among the problems he experienced since winning the jackpot was a death threat from a killer hired by his brother, who aimed to get his hands on the money himself by doing away with Post.

He also has been sued by a former girlfriend seeking one-third of the winnings, has experienced six broken marriages and has been given a prison sentence for shooting at a debt collector. He was living on welfare when he died, according to media reports.

Juan Rodriguez, winner of 18 million in 2002, now spends his life in a mobile home. Booze and four dogs are his only companions. Immediately after he won, relatives and friends queued up in the hope of a share of the winnings. Rodriguez bought cars, took trips and handed money out all over the place. Today he has no idea where his millions went.

At least he's alive. A Florida lottery winner was murdered last year by two men out to get his money, and a Texan who won the lottery ended his own life after going on a spending spree and having a love affair that led to bankruptcy and divorce. In another case in Minnesota, a lottery winner sits penniless in prison after a fatal accident she is accused of causing while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

A New Jersey case involves a woman who cracked two jackpots back- to-back for a total of 5.4 million dollars. Like Rodriguez, she now lives in a mobile home. She gambled her money away in casinos. But at least the money she won and lost was rightfully hers as opposed to the riches of one other American who is behind bars accused of buying her winning lottery ticket with a stolen credit card.

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