Soccer Dad

Unlucky at winning

A number of years ago we went to Monsey for Pesach (Passover). We went to Rabbi Wein's shul on one occasion and he talked about lottery winners. He mentioned that lottery winners had higher rates of divorce, suicide and incarceration than the general population.

I might not have remembered his talk for long except within a month the Baltimore Sun ran an article of a lottery winner who was broke, had broken up with her boyfriend and had been arrested; all over a lotter ticket.

Then it came back to me again when, a few years ago, Jack Whittaker of West Virginia re-appeared in the news, just two years after winning a big Powerball jackpot. He was facing legal action.

Two years later, the picture the public is seeing now is a mug shot of a haggard, somber Whittaker.

Whittaker, 57, has been arrested twice for drunken driving in the past year and has been ordered to go into rehab by Jan. 2 for a 28-day stay. He also faces charges he attacked a bar manager, and is accused in two lawsuits of making trouble at a nightclub and a racetrack.

And it came back to me again about a week ago when I saw the obituary of William Bud Post.

In 1996, he decided on a final ploy to get out of debt. He sold the mansion for $65,000 and auctioned off the remaining 17 lottery payments he was due, hoping to clear his bills and hold on to a nest egg.

"Once I'm no longer a lottery winner, people will leave me alone. That's all I want. Just peace of mind," he told the Guardian newspaper of London.

Unfortunately, by the next year, he had spent almost all of the remaining $2.65 million on his debts, two homes, another truck, three cars, two Harley-Davidson motorcycles, two 62-inch Sony televisions, a luxury camper, computers and a $260,000 sailboat docked in Biloxi, Miss., with which he planned to start a charter fishing business.

He was arrested on that boat in 1998 after he refused to surrender to serve a 6- to 24-month prison sentence on a six-year-old assault conviction. Mr. Post, found guilty of firing a shotgun at a man who had come to his Oil City mansion to collect a car-repair debt, had appealed the conviction up to the state supreme court to no avail. After he served the sentence, he was reportedly living on a $450-per-month disability check.

Six marriages ended in divorce. He also had a companion with whom he had a child.

No money can't buy you love. Or possibly even happiness.

Technorati Tags: lottery winners.