Powerball Jackpot: Previous Winners Cite Cautions As It Swells To $1.8 Billion Here's Why

(MENAFN- Live Mint) With the Powerball jackpot , which swelled to $1.8 billion, or an estimated $826.4 million in cash, sent people to corner stores and gas stations to buy tickets, previous winners share their hard lessons learned and advice for those who might hold a lucky ticket, reported The New York Times.

The Powerball jackpot is now the second-largest in US history and if no one wins on Saturday, the amount may climb higher.

However, Timothy Schultz, who won a $28 million lottery in 1999 in Iowa, cautioned people not to be swayed by smooth talkers who simply claim the title. He advised hiring a financial adviser with the hard-earned experience to back it up.

“If I had a dime for every person that called themselves a financial adviser and wanted to help, I would be a billionaire by now,” The New York Times quoted him as saying. Schultz now has a podcast,“Lottery, Dreams and Fortune,” where he interviews lottery winners.

Winners who lost all money:

In his podcast, he also shared the story William Post, who in 1988 won a lottery of $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania. From that amount, Post ought houses, cars and a plane, and within a year, the money was gone.

According to his obituary in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2006, which NYT quoted, Post's relatives sought some of the prize money , while his landlord and sometime girlfriend sued. Not only this, his own brother tried to have him killed.

“Everybody dreams of winning money, but nobody realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork, or the problems,” The Washington Post reported him saying in 1993.

In another incident, Bradley Hahn from Missouri won $10 million from a $40 lottery ticket. From that prize money, he paid his debts. But then he bought a midnight blue 2015 Corvette Stingray and a 2016 Cadillac SRX. But, both the cars lost thousands of dollars in value almost immediately.

“I probably would have financed them instead,” Hahn said, adding his friends came to celebrate.“It got to the point where I'm like, 'Dude, I'm not a bank,'” he said in an interview.

Nowadays, Hahn has learned to keep the circle of people around him small.

He also remembers the warning a friend who won $3 million and lost everything.

“Stay away from gambling. You already won. Don't risk it.”

In another instance, Urooj Khan from Illinois in 2012 won a cash prize of $1 million from a scratch-off ticket, but was poisoned with cyanide a month later. Though the police investigated his death as a homicide, but no arrests were ever made.

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