Posted on 01/06/2010 6:49:19 AM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
LAKELAND, Fla. — In 2006, Abraham Shakespeare — a truck driver's assistant who lived with his mother — won $30 million in the Florida lottery. His good fortune may have cost him his life.
Shakespeare vanished months ago. His mother hopes he is somewhere in the Caribbean, lying on a beach and enjoying the good life away from all the hangers-on who were constantly hitting him up for money.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Sad news if it is true.
Best way to stop people coming after you with their hands out? Fake your own death. I hope that he’s outsmarted all of the leeches and is kicking back somewhere smiling.
If you win that kind of money, go underground, move to another state, and don’t answer the phone.
98% of all big lottery winners adjust to their good fortune and live a normal (but rich) life style. The remaining 2% have problems with handling the wealth and their stories are always in the media.
I won $1,000,000 in the French lottery. They are paying me $1 a year for a million years.
......Bob
(obscure reference to the man some think actually wrote the plays of William Shakespeare) blah
I won a Nigerian lottery without even entering. The money will be deposited directly into my bank account as soon as I supply them with a few numbers they request.
I don’t know.
Most lottery players are too stupid to think up a scheme like that.
And this guy is a truck driver’s assistant? Who lives with his mother?
He has a criminal rap sheet and hung around unsavory characters.
Be careful what you wish for.
“If I ever won the lottery (won’t happen as I nearly never buy tickets) I would be represented by an attorney to collect the winnings and I would remain anonymous”
from the list of past Powerball winners:
Rockson, LLC
Washington D.C. April 8, 2009 Cash $144,000,000 annuity
$79,681,116.60 cash
...by law a real person has to go pick up the winnings and be photographed...that is CYA for the Lotto Commission so people won’t say they keep the money...it’s best to set up an LLC or Trust and have the lawyer pick up the dough...thieves read the paper too...while you’re touring Europe on your lotto winnings they break into your house for your flat screen and other newly bought toys.
Thanks for the info. In the unlikely event that I will ever win a lottery, I will know how to handle it!
In some states, collecting anonymously isn't an option. It's in the fine print that your name be used in future lottery promotions (reason, I suppose, to reassure the public that real people actually win the lottery and it isn't just a big scam).
At any rate, it isn't the strange creeps out there to worry about. It's friends and family members, people who are most close to you in your life, who you are going to have to get very good at telling no to (and likely strain some relationships in the process). In almost all the "rags to riches and back to rags" stories I've read about, it is these people who never stop asking for more who invariably cause the fortune to be squandered.
The way I see it, winning big would solve all my current problems but bring with it a host of new ones.
75% lose or spend the money within five years.
(I must've been typing my reply while you were hitting the post button).
You could not be more correct. In the Eighties, I was part of a group winnning a Lotto; my share was about $3,000 after taxes. It seemed that quite a few “acquaintances” and long-lost “friends” tried to connect. What a headache!
The only benefit was that I had several fun dates with a former girlfriend and a couple of gals I casually dated in the Seventies.
But what a great 5 years!
“75% lose or spend the money within five years.”
Studies in the U.K. and in North Carolina indicate the opposite. They found that in the U.K., over 90% of the winners still had half or more if their winnings after 10 years.
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