Winner: William “Bud” Post
Prize amount: $16.2 million
The Curse: William “Bud” Post’s life story reads like a tragic Disney story that never gets happy. He was orphaned at a young age, and spent most of his life as a drifter until he won the Pennsylvania Lottery for $16.2 million in 1988. It only took a few months for him to lost it all, having spent it on houses, cars, boats, a twin-engine airplane (even though he didn’t have a pilot’s license), and “shady business deals.” (At least it sounds like he enjoyed it.) His brother hired a hit man to try to kill him and his sixth wife, a landlady made him give her a third of his winnings, and he was sent to jail at one point for “firing a gun over the head of a bill collector.” (We have all dreamed about doing that last one.) He died without a nickel to his name in 2006 of respiratory failure. He had told friends, before he died, “I was much happier when I was broke.” [Washington Post]
