Money won’t buy you happiness. In fact, if you believe in curses, winning Wednesday’s $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot may make you the opposite of happy.
It could kill you.
Stay with me here. According to the New York Daily News, 70 percent of lottery winners end up broke within seven years. Even worse, several winners have died horribly or witnessed those close to them suffer.
Here are some of the most notorious cases of lottery winnings gone wrong:
Abraham Shakespeare
Abraham Shakespeare (courtesy WFTS)
Shakespeare won $30 million in the Florida lottery in 2009. But he didn’t have a lot of time to spend it.
Authorities say Shakespeare, 47, was shot twice in the chest by a .38-caliber pistol sometime in April 2009. He wasn't reported missing until November 2009. His body was found under a slab of cement in a backyard in January 2010.
Tampa woman DeeDee Moore was later found guilty in Shakespeare’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Prosecutors argued that Moore, 40, befriended Shakespeare before he vanished. After Shakespeare had given away most of his money to people who simply asked for it, Moore agreed to manage the little he had left, but instead, prosecutors said, stole his winnings and killed him.
David Lee Edwards
Edwards was unemployed when he won part of a $280 million lottery jackpot in 2001.
He was an ex-convict, and at the time of his big win it was the third largest lottery pot in U.S. history. Edwards, originally form Kentucky, received a lump sum of $27 million after taxes.
Edwards was convicted of robbery in 1981 and served out his sentence in 1997. Several years after winning the lottery, he was evicted from his million-dollar home in Florida after failing to pay back dues to the homeowners association.
The New York Daily News reports Edwards lost of all his money in just a few years and ended up living in a storage unit surrounded by human feces.
He died at age 58 in 2013 at the Community Hospice Care Center in Ashland, Kentucky.
Jeffrey Dampier
Dampier won $20 million in the Illinois lottery in 1996. His death came nine years later in Florida where he had become a popcorn entrepreneur.
Dampier was running Kassie's Gourmet Popcorn in Tampa when he was kidnapped in 2005 by his wife’s sister, Victoria Jackson, and her boyfriend, Nathaniel Jackson (not related).
Prosecutors said the two bound Dampier’s hands with shoelaces and forced him into a van. As they drove around, Nathaniel Jackson handed the gun to his girlfriend and said, "Shoot him or I'll shoot you," prosecutors said. Victoria Jackson squeezed the trigger, firing once in the back of Dampier's head.
Authorities said Dampier had a sexual relationship with Victoria, and showered her with presents from his lottery earnings before she killed him.
Urooj Khan
Urooj Khan (courtesy WPTV)
Khan, a 46-year-old immigrant from India who owned three dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in 2012. He said at the time he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.
That would never happen, though, as Khan died one day after the state of Illinois cut him a check for $424,449 (his winnings on the ticket after he chose a one-time payment and after subtracting taxes.)
He threw up blood the same day, a relative said.
The medical examiner first ruled Khan had died from natural causes. Six months later, authorities said they had conducted further tests — at the request of a relative they did not name — and determined it was cyanide poisoning. No one was ever charged.
Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll (courtesy YouTube)
Carroll, 26, won $15 million U.S. dollars in a British jackpot back in 2002.
He was soon left with nothing after dishing out cash on parties, cocaine, hookers and cars, the New York Daily News reports.
He was nicknamed "the lotto lout" and also spent his former fortune on a villa in Spain, quad bikes, demolition-derby cars and flashy jewelry, the Huffington Post reports.
Carroll was jailed in 2006 following an altercation and was later convicted of drug possession.
Jack Whittaker
Jack Whittaker (courtesy CNN)
Whittaker, of West Virginia, was already worth around $17 million when he won a $314.9 million multi-state Powerball jackpot in 2002.
After his winnings, Whittaker had hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stolen from his cars, home and office. He pleaded no contest to assaulting and threatening to kill a bar manager. He was arrested twice on drunken-driving charges and was accused of groping women at a racetrack.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
In 2004, his 17-year-old granddaughter, Brandi Bragg, was found wrapped in a tarp under a junked van outside her boyfriend's house. State police said her body had been there for weeks but would not comment on a report that she died of a drug overdose, USA Today reports.
His daughter later died of unknown causes. Both Whittaker and his wife said they wished he had torn the ticket up, the New York Daily News reports.
Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
Life was good in June of 1997 when Harrell Jr. and his wife Barbara Jean held the only winning ticket to a Lotto Texas jackpot of $31 million.
After his big win, the Houston Press reported Harrell Jr. purchased a ranch, as well as a half-dozen homes for himself and other family members. He, his wife and all his kids got new vehicles. He made large contributions to his church. If members of the congregation needed help, Harrell Jr. was there with cash.
But then his life started unraveling and his spending and lending spiraled out of control.
After splitting with his wife, Harrell Jr. locked himself in his upstairs bedroom, stripped away his clothes, pressed a shotgun barrel against his chest and pulled the trigger, investigators said.
According to the Houston Press, shortly before his death, Harrell Jr. confided to a financial adviser: "Winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to me."
The Associated Press contributed to this report
