These are people who you’ve loved deep down, and they’re turning into vampires trying to suck the life out of me.”ĭonna Mikkin won $34.5 million in the New York State Lottery in 2007. “I had to endure the greed and the need that people have, trying to get you to release your money to them,” she said in 2012. She told the Associated Press she had to “adapt to this new life” which changed how she saw her closest family and friends. Louis woman is now a retired social worker and wrote the book, How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life. Sandra Hayes won the Missouri lottery in 2006 and split a $224 million Powerball with a dozen coworkers. “These are people who you’ve loved deep down, and they’re turning into vampires trying to suck the life out of me” I don’t like the hard heart I’ve got,” he said. Well, I wish that we had torn the ticket up, too.” Whittaker was also robbed of $545,000 sitting in his car while he was at a strip club eight months after winning the lottery. “You know, my wife had said she wished that she had torn the ticket up. “My granddaughter is dead because of the money,” he told ABC. The then-55-year-old West Virginia construction company president claimed he went broke about four years later and lost a daughter and a granddaughter to drug overdoses, which he blamed on the curse of the Powerball win, according to ABC News. Jack Whittaker was already a millionaire when he won a $315 million in a lottery in West Virginia in 2002.

With a $1.5 billion at stake Wednesday, here are some of the stories of past-winners that gamblers should know about: About 70 percent of people who suddenly receive a windfall of cash will lose it within a few years, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education.

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