He Was A Millionaire, Then He Won The Lottery And Lost Everything

We've written about a lot of lucky lottery winners at Shared, but we've never come across a winner quite like Andrew "Jack" Whittaker.

The mild-mannered construction company owner from Hurricane, West Virginia set a national record on Christmas Day 2002, when his lucky numbers won him $315 million. Whittaker didn't even like to play the lottery, but he was at the grocery store anyways and bought $100 worth of tickets, since the jackpot was so big.

At the time, Whittaker's win was the largest jackpot ever won by a single person. It was also pretty ironic, because Whittaker was already worth at least $17 million because of his business. To give back, the man who already had so much donated 10% of his winnings to Christian charities, and started a non-profit organization in his name.

Whittaker even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay back the clerk that sold his winning ticket. The grateful winner bought her a new house, a new Jeep Brand Cherokee, and signed her a check worth $44,000. As the New York Times reported, Whittaker was excited about the "good works" he could fund with his winnings.

But just months after his numbers were drawn, Whittaker started feeling the effects of what he calls "the Powerball curse"...

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Photo: Shared.com