Murder, mystery and misery - Unfortunate endings of casino and lottery fortunes

Murder, mystery and misery - Unfortunate endings of casino and lottery fortunes

Published by Thisbe Savva, 4 February 2018

You have bought your lottery ticket, it’s one of those days where you just know that you’ve got lady luck on your side because you just feel it in your bones. So you’re skipping along the street on your way home ready to perch in front of the tv to hear the results of the lottery this evening. The jackpot is at a massive £4 million, can you even begin to wonder what you could do with all of that cash? Oh the things you could buy, the places you could see, it would be incredible, but it’s all down to fate. Can you think of which big jackpot slots you would play to try and win a whopping amount like that?

Anyway, the numbers are called and you have officially hit the jackpot and managed to win the £4 million lottery! What would you think if this happened to you, where could you even begin? Maybe you have already been through something similar and won the lottery, or a smaller amount of money. What are those thoughts which run through your head, do you first think about what you would buy? Or are you mostly caught up in shock and awe?

The most realistic emotion would of course be shock and disbelief, but there is so much more that goes along with it

Tragic endings for lottery winners

There have been thousands of lottery winners over the years, from all over the globe but do you think anyone really stops to think about ‘what happened to them?’ and ‘where are they now?’. They may have won their millions from getting that lucky spin on their favourite video slots, or by buying a lottery ticket at their local convenience store. What you most likely do not know if that some of them are dead, some got murdered, some got burgled and others just threw their cash down the drain in one day.

Money can be a blessing, and a curse, and It’s hard to imagine actually getting your hands on £4 million, then all of a sudden you find yourself sitting in a pub sipping on a pint 11 days later with about £5,000 left in your bank account wondering what on earth happened. The thing with luck is that you never know when it will hit you in the face, and you can never know how long it will last for either.

We are going to talk about what happened to those lottery winners over the years who either disappeared, died, or just fell of the face of the earth. It does genuinely feel like we never get to hear about how they spent their millions, and what eventually happened to them, it’s like they fell down a black hole and never came out! The dark side of the internet tends to hold a lot of the unknown secrets which we all love to read about, and this is one of them. We, at Top Casino Sites UK are about to unleash the curiosity you’ve all been holding onto.

What on earth happened to those lottery winners throughout the years?

Buying a ticket for a friend

Starting with probably one of the most gruesome endings, Abraham Shakespeare's body was found under a concrete slab in the backyard of someone he knew. This unfortunate lottery winner was murdered by a business acquaintance who wanted to take his millions but thought that the only way to do so was by killing Abraham. Abraham and a co-worker were on their way to Miami as they made a pit stop at a convenience store, as Abrahams co-worker, Michael Ford went into the store to purchase some drinks, he had asked if Ford could buy him two lottery tickets and he paid him back for them. When Abraham eventually managed to bag himself $17 million from this whimsical decision, Ford became very bitter and told authorities that Abraham had stolen the lottery tickets from his wallet. This story did not hold up in court but it just proves how bitter your friends can be once something like this happens.

On the 9th of November in 2009, Abraham was reported as missing by his family, saying that they did now know where he was but they had hoped that he had just up and left with his money and was living on a beach in the Caribbean sea. This was a pipe dream since the Caribbean sea ended up being a 9 foot hole in the backyard. Later on in 2012, that is 3 years later from the initial murder, Dee Dee Moore was finally convicted of first degree murder for the murder of Abraham Shakespeare. Dee Dee Moore was a ‘hanger-on’ and was constantly asking for money from Abraham, she launched a business with Abraham giving herself absolute freedom with his funds claiming later in court that he had given her this money as a gift.

There was absolutely no real reason that Dee Dee killed Abraham except from jealousy and greed

Abraham Shakespeare

The wife tried to cash in the cheque

The next spine chilling end for a lucky, but unlucky lottery winner is a man named Urooj Khan who came from the US. Urooj was discovered to have had cyanide poisoning upon his death, quite the coincidence when he had just won the $1 million winning lottery ticket just one day prior. Urooj decided to take the lump sum of the winnings and said he would put most of it into his drycleaning business. That same night he took the winnings home, he had dinner and went to bed just like any usual night, except for the screams which the family later heard that night. Urooj was rushed to a hospital and was later pronounced dead but the unbelievable thing was that no autopsy was done because there was nothing apparently suspicious about his death.

One specific family member did not feel happy about Urooj’s death just being brushed under the carpet and they approached the doctor pleading for further tests to be done. More tests were done and it was found that he had died from cyanide poisoning and the suspect was his wife, Ms Shabana Ansari.

Ms Shabana tried to cash the cheque shortly after the death of Urooj which of course causes even further suspicion if that was even needed. This was indeed another tragic loss for another lottery winner, it’s such a shame how deep rooted money can go, and how much sadness it can bring despite the initial happiness on the day it all happens.

Extravagant spendings

Let’s take it to the UK now, where this was not a murder or death, but one young girl who won one heck of a lot of money and clearly did not know what to do with it all. She could have put it into a savings account, or invested in a home, or even tried out some brand new casino sites, but this was not what happened. Callie Rogers was the UK’s youngest ever lottery winner and she managed to scoop up a massive sum of £2.5 million.

But with a child as young as 16, can you really expect her to know much about financials and savings?

It turns out she did not know much at all, because due to lack of knowledge or perhaps just plain right stupidity, Callie managed to deplete her funds 10 years later. She had a measly £2,580 left in her bank account because of all the extravagant spending on cosmetic procedures, holiday’s and drug filled nights out. What else could you really expect from a young girl at 16 who just managed to bag herself over a million pounds.

Killed over massive $20 million win

A much higher lottery jackpot winner was Jeffrey Dampier Jr who bagged himself an absolutely unbelievable $20 million. At the time, Jeffrey was married, however they ended up divorcing and split the winnings 50/50. After a while he met another partner named Crystal, married her and moved to Florida where he would invest in small businesses around Tampa Bay. Crystal’s two sisters were moved to Tampa Bay, and Jeffrey took care of them with his own money as they had nothing, as nice as this all sounds, money got in the way once again and ended up in the death of Jeffrey.

Jeffrey was murdered by the sister of his wife, along with her boyfriend, Nathaniel Jackson, and they had no other reason to murder him other than for his jackpot winnings. The cruel death was a whole made up scene created by Victoria and her boyfriend. Victoria had pretended that she had been having some car issues, and as Jeffrey went to help her, they tied his feet and hands with shoelaces as Nathaniel pointed a gun at his head forcing him to get inside the van. Nathaniel then gave the shotgun to Victoria and told her that if she didn’t shoot Jeffrey, then he would shoot her, and inevitably, Jeffrey was shot in the back of the head.

Jeffrey Dampier Jr

Rags to riches and back again

Next up is the perfect rags to riches story, but with a twist, this is a story of John McGuiness and the way he went from rags to riches, and then riches back to rags again. Really, it’s a shame when you think about how people can destroy their lives from winning a massive amount of money, but don’t get us wrong here, not everyone does end up ruining their lives from getting a big win on slot games, or winning the jackpot. But unfortunately it does happen, and this is what we are talking about today. John McGuiness from Scotland had one of the biggest lottery wins ever, he managed to win an incredible £10 million, but a few years down the line he ended up homeless and skint.

McGuiness made some disastrous investments such as £4 million to a second division football club, buying cars worth an unbelievable £500,000 and giving much of the cash away to friends and family. Fair enough, if you did manage to win £10 million, there isn’t a doubt in our minds we would love to treat our family to some of it, but as always there should be some sort of limit.

John McGuiness found himself 11 years later sunken in debt, trying to find a job and applying to live in a council house. His initial bankruptcy came from owing over £35,000 for a Porsche sports car which has now been possessed, along with his family home worth over £500,000. What an unfortunate riches to rags story.

A lucky win ended in suicide

The last sad and very unfortunate destiny from winning the lottery millions is a man named Gerald Muswagon who won the lottery in 1998. He had been the extremely lucky winner of a $10 million lottery draw in his hometown of Winnipeg in Canada, who knew that with such an insignificant amount such as $2, he would be walking away with $10 million in his bank account. This is how life can just flip upside down sometimes and we can never be prepared for anything. Muswagon took a lump sum of the winnings, and in the same day he decided to treat his buddies to 8 brand new big screen TV’s, and a house for himself.

What a day for Muswagon!

It seems to be the trend for many of these lottery winners to grab the cash and run out to buy the first thing on their mind, it’s possible that you get that sort of rush feeling like ‘I can buy anything and everything’, but this could very well be the beginning of the end to that so-called never ending cash flow.

Things indeed went south for Muswagon after a while, he picked up a nasty drug habit, and was arrested for various different reasons including assault against a 19 year old girl. Muswagon inevitably went into deep depression, and lost all of his $10 million winnings, he ended up committing suicide in his parents garage just 7 years after the big win.

Lottery casino dollars

Maybe it's better to keep a big win to yourself

The amount of people who are murdered because of money is unbelievable, money is something that will forever come and go. One day you may have more of it, and the next day you may have nothing. No matter whether you made your winnings on an online casino, or down the local convenience store, it would be considered your own winnings, and your own bonus cash.

People can change when there is a lot of money all of a sudden appearing, and this is the scary thing about it

You just need to be wise, and use your head, and choose who you would want to tell about it, or even better, just keep it to yourself if you win the jackpot. There are some really wonderful jackpot slots currently out there, so who knows when it will be your time to shine, the best way to find out is by actually trying and seeing if you have the luck of the Irish today.

See sources of the victims here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey\_Dampier\_Dampier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham\_Shakespeare

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