Lottery winners' good luck can go bad fast
By Oren Dorell, USA TODAYMon Feb 27, 8:05 AM ET
Eight workers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant who won the $365 million Powerball jackpot last week may want to take heed of the downside of such good fortune.
Not that anyone would turn down such a windfall, but other heavenly jackpots did not lead to paradise. Some big winners have filed for bankruptcy within a few years, been attacked by family members and been besieged by requests from people they didn't know.
Steve Granger, 53, of Henderson, N.C., won $900,000 in the West Virginia Lottery in September. He received about $600,000 after taxes and put most of it away for his and his wife's retirement. But he says there have been unpleasant moments.
"All of a sudden everybody knows your business, everybody knows what you have," Granger says.
At
a party recently, Granger heard someone say in an ugly tone, "There go
those lottery people," as he and his wife passed by. A man he hardly
knew asked him to invest in a gold mine. "I went through a phase where
everybody was grabbing me thinking I was going to give them luck," he
says.
Within days of winning a $41 million share of a Powerball
jackpot in 2001, Patricia and Erwin Wales of Buxton, Maine, were sued
by co-workers who claimed to be co-winners. The lawsuit was dropped,
but lawyer Terrance Garney said a new beginning for the clerk and the
lawn-maintenance man was "not an easy transition." The Waleses were
beset with requests by friends they didn't know they had and by
investment companies who wanted to handle their money.
They
hired a team of lawyers to help them, and set aside $5 million for a
non-profit charitable foundation that contributed $263,000 in 2005 to
community and religious causes in and near Buxton.
Others have had difficulty with easy money:
•
William "Bud" Post, who won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery
in 1988, had a brother who tried to have him killed for the
inheritance. Post lost and spent all his winnings. He was living off
Social Security when he died in January.
• Two years after
winning a $31 million Texas Lottery in 1997, Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
committed suicide. He had bought cars, real estate, gave money to his
family, church and friends. After his death it was not clear whether
there was money left for estate taxes.
• Victoria Zell, who
shared an $11 million Powerball jackpot with her husband in 2001, is
serving time in a Minnesota prison, her money gone. Zell was convicted
in March 2005 in a drug- and alcohol-induced collision that killed one
person and paralyzed another.
• Evelyn Adams, who won the
New Jersey Lottery twice, in 1985 and 1986, for a total $5.4 million,
gambled and gave away all of her money. She was poor by 2001, and
living in a trailer.
Gerry Beyer, who teaches estate law at
Texas Tech University, has written about people who come into sudden
wealth - such as lottery winners, sports figures, actors and actresses
- and how they end up losing it. Many don't realize that if they spend
their money, rather than investing and living off the earnings,
"there's nothing to replace it," Beyer says.
Under
an investment plan, the Nebraska Powerball winners' $15.5 million,
after accepting the lump sum and paying taxes, could produce a yearly
income of about $500,000 a year.
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