11 Lottery Winners Who Paid the Ultimate Price

For these unfortunate few, big rewards meant big consequences. Here are 11 lottery winners who paid the ultimate price.

Number 11: David Edwards
David Edwards spent almost $12 million during his first year as a lottery winner. However, that must’ve seemed like nothing in comparison to his overall winnings, which amounted to a total of $270 million. After purchasing a private jet, properties, a fleet of cars and squandering away unimaginable amounts of money, Lottery Legend David Edwards ended up living in a storage unit with his wife. Having contracted various diseases as a result of intravenous drug use, Edwards died at the age of 58 completely broke, without a penny, in a hospice somewhere in Kentucky.

Number 10: Urooj Khan
Lottery-ticket-buying addict Urooj Khan, had sworn off buying lottery tickets for the rest of his life. But the 46-year-old man from Chicago couldn't stop himself and he went on to buy one last ticket. Almost miraculously, this last ticket hit the jackpot. Deciding to cash out the ticket in one lump sum instead of installments, Khan waited with much anticipation for that first check of $425,000.00. Almost ironically, Mr. Khan never saw a nickel of it. The day that his winning was publicly announced, he is said to have dropped dead in his house. Doctors claimed it had been from natural causes, but a few close family members didn't buy that conclusion. A second autopsy performed a couple of days later revealed that in fact, the cause of death of Mr. Khan had been cyanide poisoning. His winnings were quickly cashed in by his estate, and to this day the police are investigating the death of unlucky Mr. Urooj Khan as a homicide. Mr. Khan should have kept his promise the day he sworn off buying lottery tickets.

Number 9: Billie Bob Harrell, Jr.
Billie Bob Harrell, Jr., felt that he was the luckiest man in the world when he hit the $31 million-dollar jackpot in Texas. Being a generous man, Mr. Harrell, Jr. quit his job, took his family to Hawaii, and donated tens of thousands of dollars to various charities. Unfortunately, his luck ran out one day after a couple of bad decisions started to take a toll on Mr. Harrell, Jr. After a few bad investments, he ended up receiving far less money than he had originally won. Not only that, but family and friends would push him constantly over money, and ultimately resulted in his wife leaving him. That more than likely took him to the edge. Not long after those events, Mr. Harrell Jr., was found in his home, alone, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Not quite the happy ending he expected when he received the news of the $31-million jackpot he had won earlier on.

Number 8: Ryan McKechnie
Ryan McKechnie was unlucky enough to be involved with drugs early in his life. He and his wife would take drugs on a regular basis. However, life seemed to have other plans for the couple when they hit the Irish lotto and won 40,000 Euros, over 60,000 American dollars. It sure seemed like life was giving them a second chance. That was until early 2013, when McKechnie’s wife died due to a drug overdose. Wanting to change the course of his life, McKechnie was generous with his friends. However, the money quickly vanished. McKechnie struggled to make ends meet for him and his family. As a single parent, he worked hard to change his life and the life of his children. However, people close to him believed that he had stashed somewhere some money from his winnings, and did not believe that he went bankrupt so quickly. That skepticism led to an assault from an unknown person, concluding with McKechnie being found dead in his own home due to a stab wound, and his house sacked.

Number 7: Amanda Clayton
Single mom Amanda Clayton thought life had new plans for her when she hit the lotto in Michigan for $1 million back in 2011. She had a history of drug abuse. As a welfare recipient, Clayton had struggled in the past years to take care of her kids. However, greed can be a powerful master. She was convicted of welfare fraud and sentenced to probation when it was revealed that she continued to receive food stamps after winning the lottery. Most likely, Clayton’s drug problem was what drove her to deceive the government in that way, and have some extra cash for her personal use. Luck ran out on the 25-years old woman, when she was found dead in 2012 due to a drug overdose.

Number 6: Gerald Muswagon
Gerald Muswagon is one of the most infamous lottery winners of all time. The Canadian struck the jackpot when he won the $10 million-dollar prize in his home town of Winnepeg. Without hesitation, Muswagon went on to buy a large house and quite a few flat screen TV’s, to celebrate his luck. A luck which, unfortunately, did not last for long. It was not joy and fun from that point on in Mr. Muswagon’s life. As a result of the large amount of money he acquired, Mr. Muswagon got into drugs and was arrested a number of times for several infractions. He ultimately let his business go into bankruptcy. And, as if that was not enough, he was arrested for sexual assault towards a 19-year-old girl. Broke, depressed, and with not much else to hold on to, Mr. Muswagon was found hanged from the neck in his parent’s garage.

Number 5: Doris Murray
Doris Murray's life was about to change drastically, everyone thought, when she realized that she had hit the $5 million jackpot. That was true, but unfortunately, the change was not for the better. Unlike most of the unlucky winners from our list, she saved up the money and kept a low profile. However, that was not enough, considering that she had not the greatest taste in men. Her longtime boyfriend could not bear the fact that Ms. Murray, thinking about her life and future, decided to break up with him. This drove her boyfriend insane, ultimately resulting in a fight. Unlucky lottery winner Doris Murray died that day, stabbed by her own boyfriend, only a year after hitting the jackpot. Ms. Murray’s friends and family insist this was all because of the money.

Number 4: Keith Gough
Keith Gough, an avid fan of horse racing, thought his days of financial struggle where over when he, very luckily, won an astonishing 9 million euros, almost 15 million dollars, back in 2005. Of course, Mr. Gough could not wait to go back to the race track and just spend as he’d always dreamed of. However, that did not last for long. After being involved in a series of shady businesses, and continuing with his constant gambling, Mr. Gough went bankrupt not long afterwards. He was abandoned by his wife, and he spent the remains of his winnings trying to survive his depression. Having to sleep in a nephew’s couch because of his bankruptcy, Mr. Gough was found dead due to a heart attack.

Number 3: Jeff Dampier Jr.
Sometimes, it’s not only from strangers we should be careful of. Sometimes, our most dangerous enemies can be sitting at our own table. That was something that Jeffrey Dampier Jr. should have had in mind when he hit the 20-million-dollar jackpot of Illinois back in 1996. He divorced his then wife and married a woman named Crystal Jackson. The couple moved to Florida where Mr. Dampier Jr. invested some of his money. Then, one day, Mr. Dampier was not to be found. Almost as if he had vanished into thin air, Mr. Dampier Jr. went missing in 2005, almost a decade after his lottery win. The police performed a thorough investigation, ultimately leading in suspecting his close family members. 3 Three days after the disappearance of Mr. Dampier Jr., he was found inside the van of a man named Nathaniel Jackson. Mr Jackson was the boyfriend of Mr. Dampier Jr.’s sister in law, Victoria Jackson. They were arrested due to plotting the kidnap and murder of Mr. Dampier Jr. "In Jacksonville last night, Mr. Nathaniel Jackson was found with about $1,500 in his pocket. Where the rest of that money is, we don't know," Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman J.D. Callaway said at the time. Both were sentenced to life in prison for felony capital murder, among other charges.

Number 2: Abraham Shakespeare
Mr. Shakespeare went from being a common janitor to a multimillionaire overnight. "I would really like my old life back when I could walk the streets like a normal person without people coming up asking for money," Shakespeare said at the time. He, apparently, did not fancy fame and fortune as much as he thought he would. He started dating a woman named Doris "Dee Dee" Moore, a relationship which would result in a tragedy for Mr. Shakespeare. 3 years after his win, Mr. Shakespeare was found dead. The police claimed that Mr. Shakespeare was shot twice in the chest around April 2009, but he wasn't reported missing until November of that year. His BODY FOUND UNER 5 FT. MASS ON CONCRETE ON JANUARY 2010 body was found under a 5-foot mass of concrete on January 2010. "From the very beginning of our investigation, which started seven months after he went missing, we found out she still had Abraham Shakespeare's cellphone and was texting his friends as well as her own cellphone pretending to be Abraham," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told "Good Morning America" on Feb. 4th, 2010. Currently, Moore is serving a life sentence, convicted of murdering Shakespeare. Shakespeare's death has been cited by many financial advisers worldwide as a reason for lottery winners to be allowed an anonymity.

Number 1: Michael Carroll
It may seem that your own death is the ultimate price to pay, but for Michael Carroll, it was the people he loved who ultimately, succumbed to the power of money. Carroll lived with his Uncle Steve back in the year 2003, when surprisingly, the lottery ticket he randomly had purchased hit the jackpot. Carroll won 10 million British pounds, and went from being a petty criminal to multimillionaire instantaneously. After giving 4 million pounds to friends and family, it took 8 years for Mr. Carroll to go bankrupt. Spending most of his fortune “living like a Rockstar”, as he said, the days of cocaine, prostitutes, and parties were over. Carroll had to sell his dream home after it was almost destroyed, and his demolition derby race track he had built himself, with nothing else to hold on to. Carroll went from being a multimillionaire, to sleeping in a forest while looking for work in 2013. He now works at a biscuit factory in Scotland. However, it’s not Michael’s story that's the most tragic. His uncle Steve, after standing at his nephew’s side while he spent away his fortune, received a 200,000-pound bungalow as a gift from Mr. Carroll. There he moved in with this then-wife Kelly. They divorced two years later. Uncle Steve kept the house and after a year, his new girlfriend Ali moved in with him. They lived there peacefully for 8 years, until the night of July 15th, 2016. The neighbors woke up to loud noises and shouting coming from Uncle Steve’s home. As they looked out of the window to see what was going on, various witnesses claim to have seen Steve walking in the front lawn, shouting that he had just shot Ali. Moments later, he turned the gun to himself and ended his life at around 12:30 am. Police claim to not be looking for anyone else involved, since the evidence suggests that this was a murder-suicide case. Mr. Carroll, now known as the “lotto out”, claims that he had not spoken with his uncle Steve for years now, and that he does not understand why he would do such a thing. “Money is the root of all evil. It brings out the worst in people. Money’s destroyed half the people I’ve loved. It’s gone straight to their head. It brought out the worst in some people.” He said during an interview back in 2013. Was it the money that brought Uncle Steve to lose his mind, only the man who pulled the trigger at his wife and then to himself really knows. These were 11 winners whose luck ran out the moment they bought their lottery tickets.