Never Forget Abraham Shakespeare

I hope the winner of the $560 million Powerball last month prevails in court although the odds are against her.

Five states allow lottery winners to be anonymous; however, the excuse or reason to make the winners public is supposedly to make sure the lotteries are not fraudulent and because of transparency since the state governments are involved.

However, there have been so many tragic cases of lottery winners committing suicide, losing all their winnings, or, in the case of Florida lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare, murdered for the money.  Shakespeare's case was one of the most heinous of all.  A woman named Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore befriended Shakespeare, who had already gone through the vast majority of the money he won, but she connived to get the rest of it.  He was murdered and buried on her property until the truth came out several months later.  She was convicted of his murder.

Other lottery winners have realized that every ticket buyer’s fantasy can quickly morph into a nightmare. There are myriad self-inflicted problems that can befall a person who suddenly comes into great wealth. One bought a water park, for example. Several others have gambled their winnings away, including a two-time lottery winner who ended up living in a trailer.

Billie Bob Harrell Jr., who won $31 million in 1997, told his financial adviser shortly before his suicide that “Winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

And there are numerous examples of people who’ve tried to swindle lottery winners out of their newly acquired cash — or take the money by force.

In November 2015, Craigory Burch Jr. matched all five numbers in the Georgia Fantasy 5 drawing and won a $434,272 jackpot, The Washington Post’s Lindsey Bever reported.

Two months later, police said, Burch was killed in his home by seven masked men who kicked in his front door. His family members said the public announcement of the lottery winnings had made him a target.

It is a totally different way of life.  You have problems enough to be poor or just regular middle class, but when you have instant wealth--real, cash wealth as opposed to paper wealth--a whole new set of problems happen.  You don't know who your friends are anymore.  You have relatives asking you for financial help.  And then the fraudsters and even murderers.