9 Lottery Winners That Didn't Deserve To Win
Winning the lottery is one of those mythical events we usually expect to only happen to people who are deserving of it — grandmothers who have played their anniversary dates for years, poor families who can use it to get out of poverty, some unlucky schmo down on his luck — that type of story. But, because the Universe operates on Seinfeld-logic, sometimes it happens to just the absolute worst people. Like ...
The human disaster
We're going to start off light, with a guy who wasn't out-right trying to be an inconsiderate jerk. It was just, ya know, an unfortunate byproduct. Michael Carroll was nineteen when he won 9.7 million pounds ($15 million) in the UK lottery and, like all nineteen-year-olds, he was just awful about it. He spent his money on all the things you'd expect a nineteen-year-old to: prostitutes, cocaine, cars, a demolition derby. Wait, what? Yeah. He bought a big field to crash and burn cars in, just for funsies. The local council even set up an official hotline for residents to report all the mischief he was making. Honestly, at this point we have to ask — has anyone made this guy's tale into a sitcom? It sounds like a sitcom.
He ran out of money a mere eight years later. Nowadays, he's working odd painting jobs and battling alcoholism. His life pretty much went — in his lawyer's words — "back to square one". He doesn't seem to mind it much, though, so that's good. Alcohol issues aside, an okay ending for an immature jerk who never should've gotten rich.
Grandson for sale
What's a better story than a grandma getting some lotto money? Almost nothing! Patty Bigbee was a Florida woman who lived large with her $1 million winnings. Of course, all highs must end, and hers did in a very airplane-hitting-a-building kinda way — horribly, lots of disaster, and with no one happy. She was so unhappy about it, in fact, that she came up with a get-rich-quick scheme that could only happen in Florida. She decided she would, um, sell her grandson for $75,000. Shocking, right? Don't worry, she was willing to lower it to $30,000.
Luckily, the only people interested in baby sales were the authorities who arrested her for human trafficking. Oh, and Bigbee's daughter, the mother of the sale baby. She was fine with giving up her child in exchange for a cut of the profits. Because she had to buy a new car. Fun family.
Coworker cheater
Waffle House is considered an iconic place if you are young, live in the South, and are just the worst. Although that's not to say everyone who works there is awful. Most of the people employed there are awesome people, trying to do a good job, and are nice to their friends and coworkers. And then there was Tonda Lynn Dickerson, who was a waitress at a Waffle House before hitting it big, to the tune of $10 million. All right, so far so good — minimum wage worker who soars to fame. Seems like she deserves it. Except for one small problem: she wasn't sharing.
See, she and her co-workers all had an agreement to split any winnings between them. It makes more sense once you know that she and the coworkers were given all their lottery tickets by a kind regular, and so they decided, "Hey, if one of us gets rich, the rest of us do." Tonda Lynn agreed, and then as soon as she hit it, she was like, "See you, losers!" and drove off into the sunset with Cruella DeVille (probably), laughing all the way.
Luckily though, some small vein of light shone out, and she lost a large portion of it ... to taxes, due to her failed attempt to squirrel her dough away in a sham corporate account. Go taxes! ... is a thing we will never, ever say again.
Sex offender
Alaska has the highest rapes per capita of any US state, according to the FBI In an effort to combat this, a group was set up called Standing Together Against Rape in Anchorage (among lots of different places, too). The group decided to create a lottery to help them raise money for their cause. It went well for awhile, but then Alanis Morissette rode in on a moose, said "You think I don't know what irony is? I'll show you irony!", and gave the winning $500,000 ticket to Alec Ahsoak. Who is a twice-convicted sex offender. (In order to keep us from puking, we're not going to go into the details. Let's just say, he's the type of guy that you love to see get punched on Law & Order: SVU).
To sum up: a lottery designed to help sexual assault survivors ended up going to a repeat sexual assaulter. What's worse is, since he didn't do anything wrong when actually playing the lottery, he got to keep it all. Although, to be fair to the capricious God that rules this Universe, given the small people-to-rapist ratio, it was really only a matter of time.
Food stamp swindler
You know how some people like to complain that food stamp users are secretly rich, welching off the government, and should spend their money on food instead of drugs? Obviously, this is a horribly crass stereotype, defaming poverty-level people who are just trying to get by. Well, in most cases, anyway. Then there's the case of Amanda Clayton, a welfare recipient on food stamps and the like, who won a million in her state's lottery!
Congratulations, Ms. Clayton! A feel-good story, indeed. Wait ... (checks article title) never mind. See, despite the fact that she won more money than a lot of people will ever see in their life, she kept taking welfare benefits — according to her, she still needed them. She wound up being found guilty of welfare fraud and sentenced to probation. Later, she was found dead of a probable drug overdose. So there you go, anti-food stamp folks: the one case you're allowed to complain about. Have at it.
ANOTHER sex offender
Ever hear someone say something about the Universe being unfair — "The good die young," "Nice guys finish last," "bad things happen to good people" — and thought, "No, the Universe is, on balance, a fair and good place." Well ... here's our second sexual offender who won the lottery. Apparently, when you are the worst, you somehow have the best luck.
Timothy Poole was a convicted pedophile from Florida, who won $2.2 million dollars on a scratch-off after serving a mere thirteen months for abusing two children. We're pretty sure this just shreds and flushes the notions of karma, and also adds fuel to anyone convinced that God is dead and Satan reigns supreme. Hey! Still have some hope in the Universe? Well, his two victims attempted to sue him, to stop him from claiming the money ... and the judge was like, "Nope," since nothing in the state's laws say you can't play scratchies because you're the scum of the Earth. The victims' only real hope is to sue Poole for psychological damage, provided he doesn't conveniently blow through all his winnings first. Which he likely will, because scum.
The generous gambler
Some people shouldn't win the lottery because they've done nothing but evil in their life, and getting tons of money isn't something they should get. But then there are cases like Evelyn Adams, who didn't really "not deserve it" so much as "blew it all so meaninglessly, it would have made more sense to give it to anybody else." But, hey, at least she's not a sex offender!
Twice in two years, Evelyn won the lottery, with her total winnings exceeding $5 million, But Evelyn was a very giving person, so when people came asking, she would kindly give as much money as she could. What's more, Evelyn was a hardcore gambler, so when she wanted to gamble, she would gamble just so much. She gambled to the point where she lost all of her money. All of it. She had millions and literally gambled (and gave) it away. In her words, "I won the American dream, but I lost it, too." That's not as bad as being a horrendous person, but like, couldn't that money have gone to an AIDS researcher or something?
Marriot millionare
Hi! We'd like to take this time to advise you to go get a pillow, or something else soft and hittable, because if not, the next second might make you punch through your computer from pure, unambiguous rage. Brian McCarthy won $107 million, despite already being a millionaire. Go ahead, take some frustration out on that pillow. We'll wait.
This millionaire randomly bought five tickets and didn't even pay attention to the winning numbers. He found out on accident, on Facebook. His father stressed that there was an enormous responsibility coming with it, despite them already being multi-millionaires. How did they make their money? Well, you might recognize their business: It's Marriot, as in the ultra-successful hotel chain. So next time you stop at one of those, just remember you are helping make millionaires — who also won a gigantic lottery — even richer. Then, maybe go stay at the Motel 6 instead.
At least he's been donating some of it to charity, as in a whopping $50,000. So that's ... a small start? By the way, we have a charity, too. It's called "Can We Please Have Some Money, Rich Boy? Pretty Please?"
Wrestilicious
We've had some fun here, haven't we? Making fun of lottery winners for dumb choices, reveling in the awfulness of the Universe. Now, we're going to finish off big, by telling you about yourself. Yeah, you, reading this. This is a prophecy. This why you're not allowed to win the lottery ... probably.
Jonathon Vargas, a nineteen-year old from Florida (again with the Florida), won $35 million in the lottery and decided to do what any nineteen-year old boy would use it for — seeing cute girls do awesome things. Except, there didn't seem to be enough things for him to blow his money on. He didn't want strip clubs. He didn't want to see burlesque shows. No, he wanted to create his own show featuring cute girls doing silly things.
So he did. He created a show called Wrestilicious Takedown, all about girl wrestlers and F-grade sketch comedy. It lasted exactly one season before being trashed so hard Oscar the Grouch said, "Ouch." To see Wrestilicious in all its glory, go ahead and click that video up there. Are you telling us, if you won this much money, you wouldn't do something similar? Yeah. That's what we thought.