massive wealth was covered by the UK press - who dubbed him the king of the hooligans

- however, it didn’t last.

Among other things, he used the cash to buy legions of cars and hold demolition derbies

in his back garden. He was also said to smoke $3000 of crack cocaine daily and saw up to

four different prostitutes every day as well. In 2010 he was spotted outside a job center

after running out of money and in 2013 he was reported to be working in a biscuit factory.

9) Before 2009 Americo Lopes worked for a construction company in New Jersey. He and

his co-workers had a syndicate in which they pooled money together to buy Mega Millions

lottery tickets. One day, Lopes found that one of the tickets had won $38.5m.

He decided not to tell his co-workers and quit his job straight away, lying about needing

“foot surgery”. He also claimed unemployment benefit too to add to the greed. However,

a news website published his story and his co-workers read about it. They sued him and

the court ordered him to share his money 5 ways.

8) Thomas Rossi had been married to his wife Denise for 26 years until 1997 when Denise

divorced him out of nowhere. What she failed to mention in any divorce papers - or to her

husband - was that she had just won the Lotto jackpot of $1.3m 11 days before.

When Thomas mistakenly received a letter addressed to her about the lottery winnings two years

later, he sued her for not disclosing the winnings. The judge and jury gave Thomas every

last cent of the haul, saying that “her failure to disclose was a fraud”. If Denise

hadn’t lied about it, she could’ve kept it all.

7) UK resident Ian Galtress played the lottery multiple times with his lucky numbers, and

one day he won $1.5m with them. It should’ve been the best day of his life but instead

it kicked off a long period of frustration - he could never claim his prize because he

had lost his ticket.

Galtress and his girlfriend searched far and wide for the winning ticket, but to no avail.

Because he couldn’t find it within 30 days, the money got donated to the National Lottery

“good cause” fund instead.

6) Jose Antonio Cua-Toc entered the Georgia lottery in 2010 and won $750,000. He was delighted,

but apprehensive to cash it in, as he was worried about his illegal immigrant status

being discovered. Somewhat naively, he asked his boss, Erick Cervantes, to cash it for

him.

Cervantes claimed the ticket was his and kept all the money for himself, leading to Cua-Toc

hitting him with a lawsuit. After a lengthy court case, Cua-Toc won the money back, but

due to his citizenship status was then faced with deportation not long afterward.

5) Evelyn Adams could be considered one of the luckiest people alive. She had an amazing

stroke of good fortune when she won the New Jersey lottery TWICE in the space of 4 months

in the 1980s, accumulating a total of $5.4m. She should have been set for life…

... However, that’s not the way things turned out. She decided to celebrate this massive

injection into her bank account by going to Atlantic City and gradually gambling almost

all of it away. Years later it was reported that she has little to no money and lives

in a trailer park.

4) Oregon resident Christina Goodenow bought a lottery ticket that ended up being worth

$1m. Her method of payment was unfortunately what led to her downfall.

She had bought the ticket, as well as $12,000 worth of other purchases, using her deceased

mother-in-law’s credit card, and putting her very firmly on the wrong side of the law.

When the police found out, she was stripped of all the money and sentenced to probation.

The money ended up going straight to the police department of the city of Medford.

3) British couple Roger and Lara Griffiths won $2.8m in the lottery, but just 8 years

later Roger was left divorced, with just $10 in his bank account. What didn’t help was

the couples’ ridiculous investments.

Roger spent $39,000 releasing a single that sold just 600 copies, and Lara set up a $156,000

salon that they then resold, losing $109,000 in the process. One of the houses they refurbished

to sell on burned down in a house fire, while the others sold for nowhere near as much as

they thought they would, due to the recession.

2) When John Ross Jr. won $2m in California’s lottery, he said the first thing he was going

to do with the money was buy his own car. He stated “I’m 29 and I’ve never had

a car – there’s something wrong there”.

Just three months later, he had got hold of a car, but not quite in the way you would

expect. Ross Jr. was arrested for supposedly helping to steal a Honda Civic.

1) Two unnamed brothers won the Kansas lottery in 2013 and received $75,000. They celebrated

by, of course, having a weed and crystal meth-fueled party at their house.

During the festivities one of the brothers went to refuel the butane lighters for their

bongs in the kitchen, but got a little bit too close to the pilot light on the furnace.

The house immediately exploded and when firefighters and police got there, they could see the amount

of surprisingly undamaged narcotics present and arrested them both for possession. Bad

luck, chaps.