teddy Posted December 16, 2008 Report Share Posted December 16, 2008 I always think that the most stupid feckers on the planet are those who have nothing, win a fortune and then lose it, only to have nothing again. Look at these stupid fuckers: Eleven years after scooping a life-changing jackpot, a lottery millionaire now faces financial ruin after investing a large percentage of his fortune in a Scottish football club. John McGuinness won £10 million when his lottery numbers came up in January 1997. He was earning £150 per week working as a hospital porter and sleeping on his parentsâ?? floor when he hit the jackpot. Understandably, he lavished over £3 million on gifts for his family and snapped up a £140,000 Ferrari Modena Spyder and a £500,000 seafront apartment in Majorca for himself. He also embarked on Caribbean cruises, five star ski trips and holidays around the world. Riches to rags Sadly for McGuinness, he now finds himself in serious debt and looking for a job all because he accepted an invitation to join the board of Scottish first division side Livingston FC. Thanks in part to McGuinnessâ?? investment, the club initially enjoyed huge success, finishing 3rd in the Scottish Premier League, winning the Scottish League Cup and enjoying a reputation-enhancing UEFA Cup run. But the clubâ??s success on-field was not mirrored in the boardroom. Livingston went into administration in February 2004. Mr McGuinness had used his personal fortune to guarantee club loans and they were called in. With huge legal costs adding to his debts, he currently owes £2.1m to the Royal Bank of Scotland, is said to have no money left and is about to have his house repossessed. With his life of luxury now a distant memory, McGuinness is preparing to return to work. His wife Sandra, a former nurse, is thought to have enrolled on a hairdressing course to help make ends meet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teddy Posted December 16, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2008 William "Bud" Post III, 66, whose $16.2 million in lottery winnings brought him debt, despair and heartache, causing the kind of trouble often recounted in country-western songs, died of respiratory failure Jan. 15 at a Pittsburgh area hospital. "Everybody dreams of winning money, but nobody realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork, or the problems," he said in 1993, five years after winning the Pennsylvania lottery. His problems included a brother who tried to hire a contract murderer to kill him and his sixth wife; a landlady who forced him to give her one-third of the jackpot; and a conviction on an assault charge, after Mr. Post fired a shotgun at a man trying to collect a debt at his deteriorating dream house in northwestern Pennsylvania. He went bankrupt, came out of it with $1 million free and clear and spent most of that windfall, too. Mr. Post, born in Erie, Pa., had a hard-luck life. His mother died when he was 8 years old, and his father later sent him to an orphanage. Most of his life he was little more than a drifter, working as a spray painter on pipelines and as a laborer, cook and truck driver in circuses and carnivals. He never owned a home or a new car and once served a 28-day jail sentence for passing bad checks. He told newspaper reporters that on the day he bought his winning lottery ticket in 1988, he was on disability and his bank account totaled $2.46. He pawned a ring for $40 and handed Ann Karpik, his landlady and occasional girlfriend, the cash for 40 tickets in the state lottery. Among the tickets was the winning one. In the two weeks after Mr. Post collected the first of his 26 annual payments of $497,953.47, he spent more than $300,000. He acquired a liquor license, a lease on a Florida restaurant for his brother and sister, and a used-car lot and its fleet for another brother. He also bought a twin-engine plane, although he did not have a pilot's license. Within three months, he was $500,000 in debt. A year later, estranged from his siblings, Mr. Post bought a mansion in Oil City, Pa., for $395,000 and set about upgrading it. But all was not well; a county court ordered him to stay away from his sixth wife after he fired a rifle shot into her Pontiac Firebird, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. When his former landlady Karpik sued him for a portion of the lottery winnings, Mr. Post was mortgaged to the hilt. She claimed that they had agreed to split any winnings, which Mr. Post vigorously denied. After three years, a judge ruled that he owed her one-third of all the proceeds, but Mr. Post was unable to pay. When he refused to turn over his 1992 annual payment to satisfy the judgment, the judge ordered all of his lottery payments frozen until the dispute was resolved. The paper multimillionaire, strapped for cash, sold off most of his acquisitions. Visitors to his crumbling mansion in Oil City noted plywood-covered windows, missing shower stalls, a swimming pool filled with debris, an old car on blocks in the weedy yard and a malfunctioning security system that chirped six times every 60 seconds. A disheveled Mr. Post ambled around his 16-room home without his false teeth, because he said they made his head hurt. "I was much happier when I was broke," he moaned. In 1996, he decided on a final ploy to get out of debt. He sold the mansion for $65,000 and auctioned off the remaining 17 lottery payments he was due, hoping to clear his bills and hold on to a nest egg. "Once I'm no longer a lottery winner, people will leave me alone. That's all I want. Just peace of mind," he told the Guardian newspaper of London. Unfortunately, by the next year, he had spent almost all of the remaining $2.65 million on his debts, two homes, another truck, three cars, two Harley-Davidson motorcycles, two 62-inch Sony televisions, a luxury camper, computers and a $260,000 sailboat docked in Biloxi, Miss., with which he planned to start a charter fishing business. He was arrested on that boat in 1998 after he refused to surrender to serve a 6- to 24-month prison sentence on a six-year-old assault conviction. Mr. Post, found guilty of firing a shotgun at a man who had come to his Oil City mansion to collect a car-repair debt, had appealed the conviction up to the state supreme court to no avail. After he served the sentence, he was reportedly living on a $450-per-month disability check. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teddy Posted December 16, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2008 "Winning the lottery isn't always what it's cracked up to be," says Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey lottery not just once, but twice (1985, 1986), to the tune of $5.4 million. Today the money is all gone and Adams lives in a trailer. "I won the American dream but I lost it, too. It was a very hard fall. It's called rock bottom," says Adams. "Everybody wanted my money. Everybody had their hand out. I never learned one simple word in the English language -- 'No.' I wish I had the chance to do it all over again. I'd be much smarter about it now," says Adams, who also lost money at the slot machines in Atlantic City. "I was a big-time gambler," admits Adams. "I didn't drop a million dollars, but it was a lot of money. I made mistakes, some I regret, some I don't. I'm human. I can't go back now so I just go forward, one step at a time." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekong Posted December 16, 2008 Report Share Posted December 16, 2008 Short Post. A guy who was a friend of mine when we were teenagers won 6.5 Mill Quid on the UK Lottery and decided he could use his wealth to become a big time coke dealer (and I don't mean processed coal) He is now into his seventh year inside and there is a contract on his head if and when he gets out due to stepping on toes and not being able to keep his gob shut. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torneyboy Posted December 17, 2008 Report Share Posted December 17, 2008 Sad tales ...if only the spoke to a financial advisor or even a bank to get advice ...sure have some fun but to blow the lot is crazy and stupid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranma500 Posted December 17, 2008 Report Share Posted December 17, 2008 Yes. If only they'd taken the advice of a reliable investment banker, they'd now be fine - someone with a good trustworthy reputation like Bernard Madoff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTO Posted December 17, 2008 Report Share Posted December 17, 2008 OK - So all the posters above - say you win 2 million $. What would you do? Retire - keep working - put in bank - bonds - whatever Ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unit731 Posted December 17, 2008 Report Share Posted December 17, 2008 Evil is the root of all fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rookie Posted December 17, 2008 Report Share Posted December 17, 2008 OK - So all the posters above - say you win 2 million$. What would you do? Being I'm retired, I'd simply put the $$ in a secure investment. Even at a _paltry_ 2.4% gov't guaranteed rate that's an extra $48k/year and it's not hard to find a secure 5% investment which would provide $100k/year. Then, having been instantly transformed into Thailand's 'handsome man', it would then be mega party and travel time. The $2mil would be willed to my heirs after I died with a big smile on my face... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bust Posted December 17, 2008 Report Share Posted December 17, 2008 If I invested $2m in my current cash account I would be earning about $2500 a week in interest. Not sure how the tax would work but even at the top rate I could retire tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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