Millions Slipping Away – The Biggest Powerball Fortunes Ever Lost

Lottery jackpots have climbed into territory that once sounded almost ridiculous. Powerball alone has produced multiple billion-dollar prizes, including the record $2.04 billion jackpot won by a single ticket in California in 2022. A standard Powerball play still costs $2 in most U.S. jurisdictions, and the odds of hitting the jackpot are about 1 in 292.2 million.

Winning that kind of money can change a life overnight, but not every change is for the better. Some winners have burned through fortunes with bad investments and unchecked spending. Others have ended up in bankruptcy court, tangled in lawsuits, battling addiction, or dealing with personal tragedies that money could not fix. These stories are less about some mythical lottery curse than what can happen when enormous wealth arrives all at once.

Sources for this piece include official lottery information, published court decisions, contemporaneous Associated Press and UPI reporting, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fox 5 Atlanta, and other archival news reports.

This post was updated on September 12, 2026, to reflect current lottery information and verified historical reporting.

Suzanne Mullins won a $4.2 million Virginia Lotto jackpot in January 1993. Long before the winning numbers came up, Mullins, her husband, Tommy, and their daughter, Susan, had agreed that any big lottery prize would be split among the three of them. After taxes, Mullins' share worked out to roughly $47,800 a year for 20 years.

The money did not stay carefree for long. Mullins' attorney later said that her uninsured son-in-law became seriously ill and accumulated roughly $1 million in medical expenses before his death in 2000. Mullins used much of her money helping with those costs, turning what looked like a life-changing fortune into a very different kind of financial burden.

As money tightened, Mullins borrowed nearly $198,000 from a finance company using her future lottery payments as collateral. She agreed to continue repaying the loan from her annual checks. When Virginia later changed its rules and allowed her to collect the remaining lottery payments in a lump sum, however, she cashed them out and stopped making the loan payments.

The lender sued. In 2004, a Virginia judge ruled that Mullins owed $154,147. Her attorney said the money had not disappeared into yachts and luxury vacations. By then, much of it had gone toward the family's medical crisis, and an attorney for the lender said he understood that Mullins had no meaningful assets left.

Curtis Sharp Jr. became an instant celebrity after winning a $5 million New York State Lotto jackpot in November 1982. The Newark, New Jersey, resident arrived at his prize announcement with both his wife, from whom he was seeking a divorce, and the woman he planned to marry. It was not exactly the standard giant-check photo op.

Sharp's personality turned him into one of the best-known lottery winners of the era. He appeared in New York Lottery advertising, attended celebrity events, and became recognizable enough that crowds sometimes stopped him in public. The money went quickly, though. Sharp later acknowledged spending heavily on family, cars, real estate, women, and an expensive lifestyle that his annual checks could not indefinitely support.

By the time Fox 5 interviewed Sharp in 2016, the fortune was gone and his life looked very different. He was living in Antioch, Tennessee, and serving as a Baptist minister. Asked what remained of the lottery money, he was not vague: "I don't have one penny of that."

Sharp did not describe his later life as a tragedy. "God has blessed me. I am doing good. I have been through a lot but he has brought me out. I'm OK," he told Fox 5. Reverend Curtis Sharp Jr. died in Nashville on October 3, 2020, at age 82.

Lisa Arcand was a single mother in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when she won $1 million in the Massachusetts lottery in 2004. She had long wanted to open a seafood restaurant, and suddenly that dream looked possible. She also did some of the things plenty of people imagine doing after a big win: bought a furnished house, took vacations, and enrolled her son in private school.

Arcand's prize was paid over time rather than handed to her as a million-dollar check. She later described selling a portion of those future payments to a finance company, giving up $15,000 a year in exchange for about $200,000 up front. That gave her more cash immediately, but it also meant surrendering part of the income she otherwise would have continued receiving.

Arcand eventually opened her seafood restaurant in Lawrence, but the business did not last. Published accounts differ on exactly how long it stayed open, but the investment failed and consumed much of the money she had left. Within several years of winning, the million-dollar cushion was effectively gone.

Years later, Arcand was unusually direct about the experience. She told The Mirror, "Winning the lottery is not all it's cracked up to be. Actually, it's been very depressing."

Willie Hurt of Lansing won a $3.1 million Michigan Super Lotto jackpot in 1989. The prize was structured as 20 annual payments of roughly $156,000. Two years later, however, Hurt was reportedly broke and going through a divorce. His attorney said much of the money had been consumed by the divorce and an addiction to crack cocaine.

Then the story became much darker. In 1991, Hurt was charged with murdering 30-year-old Wendy Elizabeth Kimmey, who had been found shot in the head after spending time with Hurt during a period of heavy drug and alcohol use. Because the surviving reporting does not establish a conviction, it is important to describe Hurt as having been charged with the killing, not convicted of it.

Hurt eventually surrendered to police and was arraigned on an open murder charge. Contemporary accounts said he signed a confession, although his lawyer later said Hurt claimed not to remember doing so. A judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation as the case moved forward.

That is also where the reliable public trail becomes thin. Later reporting has repeatedly noted that the final disposition of the murder case is difficult to establish from available records, and subsequent coverage has not produced a clearly documented verdict. Rather than fill in the gap, the safest conclusion is simply that Hurt was charged and that the ultimate outcome remains unclear in widely available reporting.

Denise Rossi's lottery story became a California appellate case. In late December 1996, a workplace lottery pool won a $6.68 million jackpot, and Rossi's share was $1.336 million. The money was to be paid in 20 annual installments of $66,800 before taxes.

Rossi did not tell her husband, Thomas, about the winnings. Instead, she filed for divorce in early January 1997 and used her mother's address for communications from the California Lottery. During the divorce proceedings, she signed financial disclosures without listing the lottery prize. Thomas did not learn about it until May 1999, when a company sent his home a letter asking whether Denise wanted to sell her future lottery payments for a lump sum.

USA national flag waving in the wind in front of United States Court House in New York

The resulting fight was a civil family-law case, not a criminal prosecution. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard E. Denner found that Rossi had intentionally concealed the lottery winnings, breached her fiduciary duties during the divorce, and committed fraud under California law.

The penalty was severe. The court awarded Thomas Rossi 100% of the undisclosed lottery asset, meaning the remaining $66,800 annual installments went to him. Denise appealed, but the California Court of Appeal upheld the ruling in 2001. Had she disclosed the prize normally, the division of the community property could have looked very different.

Winning one major lottery jackpot is extraordinarily unlikely. Evelyn Adams managed to do it twice. The New Jersey resident won $3.9 million in October 1985 and another $1.4 million in February 1986, just four months later. Together, the two prizes were widely reported as roughly $5.4 million.

Adams initially made some sensible moves. Contemporary accounts said she paid off debts and established a college fund for her daughter. But she also made unsuccessful investments, gave money away, continued buying lottery tickets, and spent heavily gambling in Atlantic City. Over time, the extraordinary double win stopped looking quite so permanent.

The money also changed Adams' relationships and privacy. She spoke about people resenting her, borrowers failing to repay money, and the difficulty of knowing who genuinely wanted to be around her. The combination of gambling, gifts, spending, and unsuccessful investments steadily ate through both jackpots.

By 2012, Forbes reported that Adams had spent the fortune and was living in a trailer. Winning twice had beaten almost unimaginable odds. Keeping the money proved to be a completely different challenge.

Alex and Rhoda Toth were reportedly down to $24.76 when they bought the Florida Lotto ticket that changed everything in May 1990. Their share of the jackpot was about $13 million, structured as annual payments of $666,666 through 2010.

The money funded travel, gifts, gambling, and a much more expensive lifestyle, but it also helped fuel years of family conflict. In 1996, Rhoda went to court seeking a domestic-violence injunction against her teenage son and his girlfriend, alleging threats and accusing them of killing the family dog and setting Alex's Corvette on fire. Those were allegations made in court records, not established findings of criminal guilt.

The Toths eventually sold the rights to their remaining lottery annuity in 1999 for lump-sum payments. Their finances continued unraveling. Alex filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in 2001, while Rhoda filed in 2001 and again in 2002. Federal prosecutors later accused the couple of filing false tax returns after they failed to properly report the lump-sum payments and made other false claims on subsequent returns.

Alex died on April 5, 2008, at age 60 before his case went to trial. Rhoda had already pleaded guilty to filing a false federal tax return. In August 2008 she was sentenced to 24 months in prison, followed by a year of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,110,458 in restitution. Years earlier, she had summed up the couple's experience rather neatly: "Sometimes I wish we could give it back."

William "Bud" Post III had just $2.46 in his bank account when he bought the ticket that won him $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery in 1988. The prize was structured as 26 annual payments of $497,953.47. That should have provided a long financial runway. Post barely made it past takeoff.

Within two weeks of receiving his first payment, Post had spent more than $300,000. His purchases and investments included a liquor license, a restaurant lease for family members, a used-car business and its fleet, and a twin-engine airplane despite the fact that he did not have a pilot's license. Within three months, he was about $500,000 in debt.

Post's problems went well beyond overspending. His brother was convicted after trying to arrange for Post and his sixth wife to be killed. His former landlady and occasional girlfriend, Ann Karpik, sued him, claiming they had agreed to split any lottery winnings. A judge eventually ruled that she was entitled to one-third of the proceeds, and Post's future lottery payments were frozen when he could not satisfy the judgment.

Post eventually filed for bankruptcy and in 1996 sold the rights to his remaining 17 lottery payments for $2.65 million. Even that fresh start did not last. He bought more homes, vehicles, electronics, and a $260,000 sailboat. Post died of respiratory failure in 2006 at age 66 after years of debt and legal trouble. As The Washington Post reported, he had long since become one of America's best-known examples of a jackpot gone sideways.

David Lee Edwards' story began with a jackpot in 2001, not 2021. The Kentucky man had a criminal record that included a 1981 robbery conviction and had spent years in and out of prison before completing his sentence in 1997. By August 2001, he had been laid off, was living in his late parents' home, and was struggling badly enough that he borrowed money from a friend to get his water turned back on.

With some of the money left over, Edwards spent $7 on Powerball tickets. One of them made him one of four winners splitting a $280 million jackpot. His annuity share was worth roughly $73.7 million, but Edwards chose the cash option of about $41 million before taxes. He received approximately $27 million after taxes.

Edwards estimated that he spent about $12 million during his first year as a millionaire. The purchases included a mansion in Palm Beach Gardens, exotic cars, jewelry, a Learjet, racehorses, and business ventures. He did hire a financial adviser, who later said that following the investment plan could have generated roughly $85,000 a month. Edwards repeatedly sold investments and kept spending instead.

Drug use and legal trouble followed. Within several years, Edwards and his wife had lost the mansion and were living in a warehouse where he stored possessions. He eventually returned to Kentucky. David Lee Edwards died at Community Hospice Care Center in Ashland on November 30, 2013, at age 58. The funeral home said the cause of death was not immediately known. Twelve years after receiving $27 million after taxes, the fortune was gone.

Andrew "Jack" Whittaker Jr. was already a successful West Virginia contractor and millionaire when Christmas Day 2002 made him vastly richer. His lone Powerball ticket won the $314.9 million jackpot, which at the time was the largest U.S. lottery jackpot ever won by a single ticket.

Whittaker chose the cash option rather than the full annuity. The lump sum was roughly $170 million before taxes and about $113.4 million after taxes. He immediately pledged 10% of the gross winnings to churches and went on to make millions of dollars in charitable contributions. The trouble that followed is well documented, but it is too simple to say he immediately squandered the entire prize.

Whittaker's years after the jackpot brought an extraordinary series of setbacks. In 2003, a briefcase containing $245,000 in cash and three $100,000 cashier's checks was stolen from his vehicle outside a strip club, although the briefcase and money were recovered. His home, office, and vehicles were targeted in other thefts, and he developed well-publicized problems with drinking and gambling.

The personal losses were far worse. His 17-year-old granddaughter, Brandi Bragg, was found dead in December 2004; authorities ultimately listed the cause as undetermined. His daughter, Ginger Whittaker Bragg, died in 2009 at age 42 after a long illness. A Virginia home belonging to Whittaker later burned in 2016. Contrary to some versions of the story, Whittaker said in 2007 that he still had substantial money. He died of natural causes in 2020 at age 72. His story was devastating, but not because anyone has established that every dollar disappeared.