Everyone dreams of winning the lottery. Whenever jackpots reach new highs, everyone goes out to purchase lottery tickets hoping and wishing that one of the tickets they have bought would change their lives forever or visit websites such as https://www.uk49.net/ to play lotto games. However, the bitter reality is that most of us will not get the opportunity to win huge sums of money via the lottery, but there are some people out there who have been this lucky. There is a winner every time, but what happens after they win? Where those people are and what do they do with their winnings? Have they achieved what they wanted?
You would think that everything would be easy once you have succeeded in winning the lottery, but some of the jackpot winners have struggled quite a bit to collect their winnings and some have ended up with nothing. If you ever turn out to be lucky enough to win, learn from the stories of these winners and don’t make the same mistakes they did:
- Handing a ticket to a friend ($750,000)
A winning lottery ticket was purchased in Georgia by Jose Antonia Cua-Toc, an undocumented immigrant, in 2010. Since he didn’t have the proper paperwork for his immigration and didn’t want to be deported back to Guatemala, he was afraid of claiming his jackpot. Therefore, he reached out to his friend and boss Erick Cervantes and made an agreement with him to pick up the money on his behalf. Unsurprisingly, his friend showed his true colors and took the money for himself, claiming that Cua-Toc had purchased the ticket on his behalf. Luckily, the surveillance footage of the ticket’s purchase was viewed by the court in 2012 and ruled in Cua-Toc’s favor.
- Buying a ticket and then forgetting about it ($1 million)
Ron Yurcis of Illinois made this mistake when he purchased a lottery ticket in August 2012 and promptly forgot about it. Three months later in November, Yurcus decided to clean his desk and found a bunch of tickets. He decided to check the numbers for fun and got to know that one of them was worth $1 million. What lessons do you learn from this? You should clean your desk more often and it is a better idea to play lottery online on websites like https://www.uk49.net/. If you win a small amount, it is transferred in your account and you are informed if you win big so you can collect the money.
- Get your ticket stolen ($15 million)
When it comes to winning the lottery, some people are really dedicated and they purchase tickets regularly for years. This is exactly what Etta May Urquhart did who invested in the California lottery for about 18 years.When she won $15 million, she made the same mistake as Cua-Toc and asked her son, Ronny Orender to sign the ticket and claim it for her. He chose to cheat his own mother and claimed the jackpot for himself. She took him to court and successfully sued him for stealing her winnings.
- Tossing your ticket in the garbage ($1 million)
It has happened to all of us at one point; we throw a couple of dollars or checks in the garbage. But, one lottery winner actually ended up throwing their winning ticket away, which was worth a million dollars. During a trip to a supermarket, Joseph and Joanne Zagmi decided to get a scratch-off lottery ticket. They returned home, unloaded their groceries and tossed out the bag without taking out the ticket. Luckily, the next day they remembered that they threw the ticket out and went looking for it in the dumpster and it won them the jackpot. Here again if you decide to play the lottery online like at Lottosend, there will be no such risk as you get an online receipt and ticket scan that cannot be tossed away.
- Establishing a demolition derby ($15 million)
People make plans of what they will do if they ever win a lottery. Some talk about investing in vacations, cars, houses or even in education. When Michael Carroll won $15 million in a British lottery jackpot back in 2002, he had quite a different plan in mind. He chose to use his winnings for throwing a demolition derby party for the new cars he had bought. This is basically a competition in which the drivers smash cars against one another and the car left at the end is the winner. The rest are just smashed up parts. He also threw away his money on women and drugs and also went to jail a couple of times. The money had to run out with such a lifestyle and it did.
- Gambling away your winnings ($5.4 million)
Lottery itself is a gamble, but the irony is that various lottery winners end up gambling their winnings away. In the 1980s, a woman in New Jersey, Evelyn Adams managed to win the lottery twice and it seemed she had all the luck in the world. But, it seemed that her lucky streak didn’t last for long. Adams succeeded in winning $5.4 million from the lottery, but lost most of it at Atlantic City when she decided to push her luck. She helped out some people too, but her money didn’t last.
These stories of the lottery winners show that winning the lottery doesn’t automatically makes things better. Just because you have won doesn’t mean it is all smooth sailing from there. There are a lot of risks involved until you finally get the cash and you have to be extra cautious because even the people closest to you will not hesitate in taking advantage of you. In addition, you also need to have a plan of what you are going to do with your winnings because you certainly want to do better than just to blow them away on useless activities. Last, but not the least, it is a good idea to try online games at https://www.uk49.net/ and other websites as they are more secure and offer greater benefits.