The curse of winning the lottery includes family feuds, lawsuits, crooked money managers, bad investments, drug addiction, gambling debt, extortion, people begging for handouts, loss of privacy, public harassment, and media intrusion. Fun! The Daily Beast presents several case studies of people who won big in the lottery but lost everything else important in their life.
[William] Post, who'd worked as a circus and carnival driver, cook, and painter, had $2.46 in his bank account when he purchased his winning ticket worth $16.2 million in 1988. He decided on annual payments of roughly $500,000 rather than a lump sum.
After cashing in, Post faced a stream of misfortunes, including a lawsuit from a landlord who obtained a third of his jackpot, an assault conviction, and bankruptcy. His brother, Jeffrey Post of Sarasota, Florida, was arrested in 1993 and later convicted of trying to enlist a hitman to kill Bud and his wife and make it look like a murder-suicide.
