DEBT DRAMA
‘World’s unluckiest lottery winner’ who had just £2 in the bank when he won £16M fortune – but ended up losing it all
THIS is the unbelievable story of the world's 'unluckiest' lotto winner who won a £16 million fortune, only to lose it all.
William Post III, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had just £2 in the bank when he raked in the jackpot, but it would lead him into hot water in the years that followed.
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Post, then 59, bought one of the winning tickets for the state lottery in 1988 and took home half of the whopping $32 million prize on offer, roughly £32 million in today's money.
Known as Bud, he had previously worked as a cook, truck driver and painter/decorator but was in serious financial trouble after being jailed for issuing invalid cheques.
After the big win, he quickly went on a spending spree, including buying a restaurant in and a $395,000 mansion in Oil City, PA.
He even bought a twin-engine jet despite not having a pilot's licence.
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However, the good times were not to last long.
In 1989, Posts' estranged brother allegedly hired a hitman to assassinate him and his then-wife in order to inherit the money, reports.
Post survived but that wasn't the last of his woe.
His on-and-off girlfriend Ann Karpik sued him that same year, claiming he had given her the money for the winning ticket and they had promised to split the cash.
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A judge awarded her one third of his payments and, when he refused to pay, ordered that the annual instalments be stopped.
This wasn't Post's last brush with the law, either, as he was arrested in 1998 for refusing to serve a prison sentence for firing a shotgun at a debt collector six years earlier.
He was also slapped with a court order to stay away from his wife for discharging the weapon at her car.
The tragic lotto winner eventually racked up debts of over $1 million and lived out his days on food stamps and a $450 a week allowance after declaring banckruptcy.
He died in 2006 from respiratory failure, aged just 66, and was survived by his seventh wife Debra Wice.
In 1993 he had said of his win: "I wish it never happened.
"It was totally a nightmare.
"Everybody dreams of winning money, but nobody realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork, or the problems."
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It comes after we gave a look into the wild life of the lottery winner who allegedly cheated death seven times.
Meanwhile, a couple who won £21 million on the draw insisted it hasn't changed them.
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