Thread: Winning The Lottery - Officially Bad For You

... At least for those two chaps it appears to have been:

UK's one-time youngest lottery winner found dead

By Jonathan Brown

10:41 AM Friday Jan 8, 2010

Stuart Donnelly was just 17 when in 1997 he became the youngest person to win the National Lottery.

Unlike the other members of his syndicate who raised their pre-requisite glasses of champagne for the cameras at the press conference to publicise their £25 million payout (NZ$54.3 million), the trainee chemist toasted his good fortune with Coca-Cola.

Yesterday police confirmed that Donnelly, 29, had been found dead by a relative in the isolated bungalow in which he lived alone at the bottom of a single-lane track.

A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway police said an investigation was under way, although there were not thought to be any suspicious circumstances.

His mother May, 52, who was on holiday in Portugual, was returning to Scotland to await the results of a post-mortem.

She is understood to have urged relatives to check on her son after ringing the house repeatedly while she was away but receiving no reply.


Donnelly had spent the years since matching six numbers on the first line of a £5 ticket struggling to cope with the notoriety of being, until 2003, the game's youngest winner.
The money had transformed the life of the quietly spoken Celtic fan, who before his win was living on £60 a week with his ailing father near Glasgow.

He had even had to borrow the bus fare to pick up his £1.9 million cheque.
Those were the early days of the Lottery, when media interest in winners was intense.

So, too, were the attentions of people who wished to help him spend the cash and the £2,400 he was said to be earning in interest.

"It was very hard to deal with all the attention I got. I even had people camping outside my house," Donnelly said in 2003. "It put a huge strain on me and my family."

The teenager rapidly abandoned his pre-Lottery world.

He gave up his job as a trainee dispenser at a local chemist's shop and ditched the part-time college course that would have given him the qualifications for a steady career.

Instead he chose to lock himself away in his home deep in the Scottish countryside where he had lived alone since the death of the man who was both his father and closest friend, Daniel Donnelly.

He was rarely seen in the village and most of those who spoke to reporters investigating the increasingly secretive Lottery winner in their midst believed the money had brought him little in the way of happiness.

Mr Donnelly senior lived to see only two years of the good life, dying of a heart attack aged just 45 while on holiday in Phuket, Thailand.
It was a devastating blow to his son.

The two had moved more than 100 miles away from the two-bedroom ex-council flat in Neilston, Renfrewshire, where they had lived together following Daniel's split from Stuart's mother, May.

Though modest by the standards of some winners, the £169,000 bungalow they bought at Buittle Bridge, near Castle Douglas, was described yesterday as a "millionaire's paradise" packed with luxuries.

Father and son had been extraordinarily close, sharing both the spoils and pressures of sudden wealth.

Each had their own front door, while inside was a snooker table n a joint passion which in their previous lives they used to enjoy playing together at the local pub.
Mr Donnelly senior, who had been forced to give up work as an engineer because of worsening polio, had long relied on Stuart for physical and financial support.
Even before the win the youngster was the household's main breadwinner. His father was glowingly proud of him.

"I couldn't get a better son," he said in an interview soon after the win.
"He's the nicest person you could meet. Stuart doesn't drink or smoke or take drugs. He's here to look after me round the clock. I'm not just saying that because he's worth a few bob. Even if he wasn't a millionaire he would still be a super son."

Stuart's generosity was well known.

As well as the new home for his father he also bought a bungalow for his mother near Irvine in Aberdeenshire, which she shared with her two younger children. Other relatives, too, shared the cash.

There were holiday properties abroad, including one in Thailand where Stuart enjoyed his first foreign break.

He bought a £2,000 executive seat at Celtic Park after years of struggling to get a ticket for matches and he also gave £15,000 to Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow, where his younger brother was treated for a genetic disorder.

But from the start he little idea what to do with his new-found wealth.

"I don't know what to do with it. I don't want a car, I can't drive. I might buy a pool table and maybe a house to put it in but who knows?" he told reporters after receiving the cheque.

The lack of direction had continued into his 20s.

On his page on social networking site Bebo, he admitted he did not like being around others and listed his activities as: "Sleeping, watching TV, listening to music, surfing the net. Basically, anything that involves not leaving the house."

- THE INDEPENDENT

Multi-million lottery win may have cost one man his life
9:23 AM Thursday Jan 7, 2010

Fears are growing that winning $30 million (NZ$40 million) in the Florida lottery in 2006 may have cost a man his life.

Abraham Shakespeare, 43, was a truck driver's assistant who lived with his mother before he won the lottery.

But months ago, Shakespeare suddenly vanished.

His mother hopes he is somewhere in the Caribbean, lying on a beach and enjoying the good life away from all the hangers-on who were constantly hitting him up for money.

The local sheriff has a more ominous theory and believes Shakespeare was killed.
"There are a lot of odd and bizarre circumstances in this case," Sheriff Grady Judd said.

"We fear and are preparing for the worst. We're working this case as if it were a homicide."

Shakespeare, won the big jackpot after buying a lottery ticket at a convenience store in a town called Frostproof, claiming later that he gave the last $3 (NZ$4) in his pocket to a homeless man just before the winning numbers were announced.


After winning, Shakespeare — who has a criminal record that includes arrests and prison time for burglary, battery and not paying child support — took a lump-sum payment of $16.9 million (NZ$22.9 million) instead of annual instalments.He bought a Nissan Altima, a Rolex from a pawn shop, and a $1 million (NZ$1.3 million) home in a gated community.

He talked about starting a foundation for the poor and insisted the money wouldn't change him.

"I'm not a material person," he said in 2007. "I don't let material things run me. I'm on a tight budget."

However, the money quickly caused him problems.

A former co-worker sued him in 2007, accusing Shakespeare of stealing the winning ticket from him.

Although six months later a jury ruled the ticket was Shakespeare's that didn't stop continuing to ask him for a piece of his fortune.

"They didn't wait. They just came right after they found out he won this money," his mother, Elizabeth Walker, said recently.

She said her son was generous, paying for funerals, lending money to friends starting businesses and even giving a million dollars to a guy known only as "Big Man".

Not long after he bought the million-dollar home in early 2007, he was approached by a woman named Dee Dee Moore, said family and officials.
Moore said she was interested in writing a book about Shakespeare's life and became something of a financial adviser to Shakespeare, who never graduated high school.

Property records show that Moore's company, American Medical Professionals, bought Shakespeare's home for $655,000 (NZ$887,200) last January.
His mother said the last time she saw him was shortly afterward, around her birthday in February.

The sheriff said the last time anyone saw Shakespeare was in April — but it wasn't until 9 November that he was reported missing by a police informant.
According to The Ledger of Lakeland, the 37-year-old Moore contacted reporters at the newspaper in April, saying Shakespeare was "laying low" because people tried to suck money out of him.

That made sense to Shakespeare's mother — sort of. "I remember once, talking with me over the phone. He said he might go to Jamaica," she said.
On 5 December, a sobbing Moore told The Ledger that she helped Shakespeare disappear but wanted him to return because detectives were searching her home and car, and looking for blood on her belongings.

One reason he wanted to leave, she said, was a child support case for a child he allegedly fathered after winning the lottery.

"Abraham sold me his mess to get a better life," she told the paper.
She even gave the paper a video that she said she took of Abraham.

In the video, he says he is tired of people asking him for money. "They don't take no for an answer," he says.

"So where you wanna go to?" Moore asks in the video.

"It don't matter to me. I'm not a picky person," Shakespeare replies.
Moore told the paper that she took the video to "protect herself."
Moore said she filed paperwork to take over five mortgages totalling about $370,000 (US$501,000) that had been owed to Shakespeare.

She said she sold the loans at a loss to another person, adding that many of the people who borrowed from Shakespeare have refused to pay and that she feels threatened by some of them.

Moore's past includes a year of probation after she was charged with falsely reporting that she was carjacked and raped in 2001.

Officials said she concocted the scheme so her insurance company would reimburse her for the SUV, which she claimed had been stolen.

Sheriff officials won't comment on Moore's involvement in Shakespeare's life.
The sheriff said that Shakespeare spent the bulk of his lottery winnings.
The fact that he didn't call his mother on Christmas reinforces the theory that Shakespeare is not just hiding, Judd said.

"I hope so much that he is alive somewhere," said his mother. "And I want people to know, if they ever win the lottery, I hope they know how to handle the people that come after them. They can be dangerous."

- AP, NZ HERALD STAFF

Money can buy you happiness....but you have to have a brain to go with it side by side.

Money turns bad people into awful people with power and good people into prey of bad people.

Originally Posted by Nawty

Money can buy you happiness....but you have to have a brain to go with it side by side.

Money can but an awful lot of convenience but it's certainly no pre-requisite for happiness.

I won the lottery once....$40.00.....I considered suicide for months.....then i just splurged on a hooker and made myself happy.

Why they don't just leave the feckin country and reside elsewhere.
Start anew. Like Pak Chong for instance. Have a couple of primates for company.

Assume this is about the Scots lad whose dad died of a heart attack in Thailand, where else, at the age of 45. Thailand can be as bad for yer health as winning the lotto. In 1998 monks in two provinces gave the winning lottery numbers to some followers for 10 times in a row. Caused a stink and they were told to stop doing it, bet the followers were happy for a while though.

Originally Posted by crazy dog

Assume this is about the Scots lad whose dad died of a heart attack in Thailand...

Ahh there again is that remarkable prescience you display when posting in response/to/about me.

Alternatively of course you could just drop the charade that you've got me on ignore - I doubt that you're fooling anyone other than yourself anyway.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

... .

I even had people camping outside my house,"

What kind of low life would camp outside some strangers house on the off chance of being given a large wedge of money to go away ?

When I was married and living in the Khon Kaen boonies , relatives used to camp out in the living room with the same thing in mind, much more civilised.

[quote=Bangyai;1283851]

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

... .

I even had people camping outside my house,"

people have been camping outside Ants house??????? poor buggers!

... And apparently a fool is what you are.

Originally Posted by The Gentleman Scamp

Originally Posted by Nawty

Money can buy you happiness....but you have to have a brain to go with it side by side.

Money can but an awful lot of convenience but it's certainly no pre-requisite for happiness.

As you say, it can make misery a whole lot more comfortable.

Originally Posted by Bangyai

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

... .

I even had people camping outside my house,"

What kind of low life would camp outside some strangers house on the off chance of being given a large wedge of money to go away ?

When I was married and living in the Khon Kaen boonies , relatives used to camp out in the living room with the same thing in mind, much more civilised.

I'm sure it paid off. What was it, somtam and biscuits?

Originally Posted by The Gentleman Scamp

Money turns bad people into awful people with power and good people into prey of bad people.

which one are you ?