‘World’s unluckiest lottery winner’ who had just £2 in the bank when he won £16M fortune – but ended up losing it all
This is the unbelievable story of the world’s ‘unluckiest’ lottery winner, who won a fortune of £16million only to lose it all.
William Post III of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania had just £2 in the bank when he hit the jackpot, but that would get him into trouble for years to come.
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The then 59-year-old Post bought one of the state lottery’s winning tickets in 1988 and took home half of the winning prize of a whopping $32million, the equivalent of around £32million today.
Known as Bud, he had previously worked as a chef, truck driver and painter/decorator but found himself in serious financial trouble after being jailed for writing bad checks.
After the big win, he quickly went on a buying spree and, among other things, bought a restaurant Florida and a $395,000 mansion in Oil City, PA.
He even bought a twin-engine jet despite not having a pilot’s license.
However, the good times were not to last long.
In 1989, Posts’ estranged brother allegedly hired a hitman to murder him and his then-wife to inherit the money. Yahoo News reports.
Post survived, but that wasn’t the last of the woes.
His occasional girlfriend, Ann Karpik, sued him that same year, saying he gave her the money for the winning ticket and they promised to split the money.
A judge awarded her a third of his payments and, when he refused to pay, ordered the annual installments to cease.
This wasn’t Post’s last run-in with the law, either, as he was arrested in 1998 for refusing to serve a prison sentence for firing a shotgun at a debt collector six years earlier.
He also received a court order to stay away from his wife for firing the gun at their car.
The tragic lottery winner ended up racking up over $1 million in debt and spending his days on food stamps and $450 a week in spending money after filing for bankruptcy.
He died of respiratory failure in 2006 aged just 66, leaving behind his seventh wife, Debra Wice.
In 1993 he had said of his victory: “I wish it had never happened.”
“It was an absolute nightmare.
“Everyone dreams of winning money, but nobody sees the nightmares that come with it, or the problems.”
It comes after we gave a glimpse into the wild life of the lottery winner who is said to have cheated death seven times.
Meanwhile, a couple who won £21million in the raffle insisted it hadn’t changed them.