What happened next
Every record here is built from reporting we can link to — the draw, the ticket, what they did with the money, and the most recent documented status, with the year it was last checked. No morality tales, no invented endings.
Winners documented
57
274 distinct sources
Largest prize here
$2,040,000,000
Edwin Castro
Earliest win covered
1981
Lou Eisenberg
Gave most of it away
8
Documented philanthropy, not anecdote
Outcomes are assigned from the reporting, not from a moral of the story.
Cheng 'Charlie' Saephan
Ended in tragedyPowerball · United States · 2024
$1,326,000,000
Laiza Chao joked to the Saephans before the draw that they were already "billionaires"; her $100 stake in a 20-ticket batch made it true.
Two anonymous winners: a Singleton (NSW) couple and a Hawthorne (Brisbane) woman
Stayed privatePowerball (Australia) · Australia · 2024
A$200,000,000
The Brisbane winner found out at 6am, scanning her ticket on The Lott app while getting ready for the gym: every number lit up and A$100 million appeared on her phone.
Theodorus Struyck
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2023
$1,765,000,000
He bought the second-largest winning ticket in Powerball history about 500 yards from his own front door, at a cabin he had paid $90,000 for in 2010.
Saltines Holdings, LLC (Miami, Florida)
Stayed privateMega Millions · United States · 2023
$1,602,000,000
The biggest Mega Millions winner in history is a company: Saltines Holdings, LLC of Miami. The Publix that sold the $2 Quick Pick collected a $100,000 retailer bonus.
Edwin Castro
Went wellPowerball · United States · 2022
$2,040,000,000
The draw ran a day late: Minnesota's sales-verification system held up all 48 lotteries, so the $2.04bn numbers were drawn at 8:57 a.m. ET on 8 November 2022.
Wolverine FLL Club
Stayed privateMega Millions · United States · 2021
$1,050,000,000
Michigan publishes the names of jackpot winners, but claiming as a four-person club meant only the club's attorney had to be named - all four players stayed anonymous.
Three anonymous winners: a Sydney father, an inner-Brisbane man and an Ipswich grandmother
Stayed privatePowerball (Australia) · Australia · 2019
A$150,000,000
The third A$50 million entry was unregistered, so The Lott named the shop - newsXpress Brassall in Ipswich - and an anonymous grandmother came forward a week later.
Manuel Franco
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2019
$768,400,000
He told reporters he had under $1,000 in his bank account when he spent $10 on the quick picks that won $768.4 million.
Anonymous Sydney healthcare worker (woman in her 40s)
Stayed privatePowerball (Australia) · Australia · 2019
A$107,575,649
Told she had won A$107 million, she first thought it was A$107,000 - then said she would celebrate with "a cheap glass of chardonnay" and go to work the next day.
Frances and Patrick Connolly
Gave it awayEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2019
£114,969,776
The winning ticket was bought online only because the Connollys had forgotten to pick one up during a shop run earlier on New Year's Day.
Andrew Clark
Stayed privateEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2018
£76,369,807
The year he won £76m, Clark raised the money he put in his grandchildren's Christmas cards from £30-£40 to £200.
Lerynne West
Gave it awayPowerball · United States · 2018
$343,900,000
She learned she had won while the ticket was lost - it had fallen out of her purse onto the floor of her sister's pickup truck.
Robert Bailey
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2018
$343,800,000
He only stopped at the West Harlem Deli to shelter from the rain, then bought a ticket with numbers a relative had given him 25 years earlier.
Mavis L. Wanczyk
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2017
$758,700,000
Scammers impersonate her so persistently that AARP built a 2025 fraud warning around her name, noting the prominent 'Mavis Wanczyk' accounts online are all fakes.
Pearlie Mae Smith and family (The Smith Family Lottery Pool)
Gave it awayPowerball · United States · 2016
$429,600,000
The matriarch is a church pastor who rarely gambled; her daughter told the official press conference the winning numbers reached her mother in a dream.
John and Lisa Robinson
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2016
$1,586,000,000
John bought exactly four tickets - one for each member of his family - at 6:56 p.m. on draw night, at a store one block from his front door.
Maureen Smith and David Kaltschmidt
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2016
$1,586,000,000
They claimed as "The Nickel 95 Trust" and refused to explain the name - and had kept the win secret even from their own family until the week they went public.
Marvin and Mae Acosta
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2016
$1,586,000,000
The 7-Eleven that sold their ticket took the California Lottery's maximum $1 million retailer bonus - while the Acostas spent six months hiring advisers before claiming.
Marie Holmes
CautionaryPowerball · United States · 2015
$188,000,000
Court and news records put the bail Holmes posted for her then-fiance at up to $12 million at a time, with about $600,000 in bondsman fees she could never recover.
Ronnie Music Jr.
CautionaryGeorgia Lottery instant scratch-off · United States · 2015
$3,000,000
Prosecutors said the ring used drones to drop mobile phones into a Georgia prison yard so inmates could direct drug deals from inside.
Roy Cockrum
Gave it awayPowerball · United States · 2014
$259,800,000
His foundation paid $1.8 million for a three-part "Henry 6" at San Diego's Old Globe and $1.2 million for apprentice stipends at Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Neil Trotter
Went wellEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2014
£107,932,603
Trotter told colleagues on the morning of the draw that by "this time tomorrow" he would be a multi-millionaire — and that night won £107.9m.
Ocean's 16 (Ocean County vehicle services workers)
Stayed privatePowerball · United States · 2013
$149,400,000
One winner, Barbara Riivald, is the daughter of the late New Jersey state senator John F. Brown, credited with helping establish the New Jersey Lottery.
Gloria C. Mackenzie
MixedPowerball · United States · 2013
$590,500,000
She got the winning quick pick only because another customer in the Publix queue stepped aside and let her go ahead in line.
Tom Crist
Gave it awayLotto Max · Canada · 2013
CA$40,000,000
Told by phone on a Palm Springs golf course that he had won C$40m, Crist finished his lunch, played the round, and kept the secret for seven months.
Jane Park
CautionaryEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2013
£1,000,000
She won on the first lottery ticket she ever bought; the UK later raised the minimum age for National Lottery games from 16 to 18.
Bob Erb
Gave it awayLotto Max · Canada · 2012
CA$25,000,000
The winning ticket was an extra play a clerk printed by mistake and was about to cancel; Erb kept it on the drive to his father's funeral.
Adrian and Gillian Bayford
MixedEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2012
£148,656,000
The GBP 148,656,000 came from a EUR 190m pot built by 14 rollovers - bought as a Lucky Dip in a Haverhill convenience store.
Urooj Khan
Ended in tragedyIllinois Lottery instant (scratch-off) ticket · United States · 2012
$1,000,000
The poisoning surfaced only because a relative pressed the medical examiner; the original natural-causes ruling came from an external examination, with no autopsy performed.
Residents of Sodeto, Spain
Went wellLotería de Navidad (El Gordo) · Spain · 2011
€120,000,000
Greek filmmaker Costis Mitsotakis was the one resident left out — the association missed his door — so he filmed the celebration and made a documentary about it.
Dave and Angela Dawes
MixedEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2011
£101,203,601
The Dawes had entered EuroMillions only twice before the draw that paid them £101m, and were living in a one-bedroom flat in Wisbech at the time.
Jerry and Marge Selbee
Went wellMichigan Winfall and Massachusetts Cash WinFall · United States · 2011
$26,000,000
Massachusetts's own inspector general cleared them, concluding that 'these math-nerd geniuses had found a way legally to win a state lottery.'
Colin and Chris Weir
Gave it awayEuroMillions · United Kingdom · 2011
£161,653,000
A stand at Partick Thistle's Firhill was named after Colin Weir, and in 2019 he took a 55% stake he pledged to hand to a fans' group.
Allen and Violet Large
Gave it awayLotto 6/49 · Canada · 2010
CA$11,250,000
They gave away roughly 98 per cent of the prize and kept about 2 per cent as an emergency fund — and had decided to do it a week before they collected the cheque.
Joan Rae Ginther
Stayed privateTexas Lottery instant (scratch-off) games; Lotto Texas (1993 win) · United States · 2010
$20,400,000
Times Market in Bishop, a town of about 3,300, sold $469,000 of tickets from the single $50 game that later paid Ginther $10 million.
Jonathan Vargas
MixedPowerball · United States · 2008
$35,300,000
He said it was the first lottery ticket he had ever bought, and he picked the numbers off his siblings' upcoming ages and his mother's age.
Abraham Lee Shakespeare
Ended in tragedyFlorida Lotto · United States · 2006
$30,000,000
The trial judge, Emmett Battles, called Moore "cold, calculating and cruel" and the most manipulative person he had encountered on the bench.
Sandra Hayes
MixedPowerball · United States · 2006
$224,200,000
Four of the 13 Missouri winners, billed as "the Lucky 13", appeared on a reality television special, Million Dollar Christmas, that aired in December 2007.
Roger and Lara Griffiths
CautionaryLotto (UK National Lottery) · United Kingdom · 2005
£1,800,000
Roger Griffiths spent £25,000 of the winnings recording with the band he had played in at university.
Dolores McNamara
MixedEuroMillions · Ireland · 2005
€115,000,000
McNamara had gone into her local shop for Irish Lotto lines; the €2 EuroMillions quick pick she was prompted to add was the first she had ever bought.
Brad Duke
Went wellPowerball · United States · 2005
$220,300,000
Duke kept driving a Volkswagen Jetta after the jackpot, and by 2008 had swapped the 2005 model for an older 2003 one.
Sharon Tirabassi
CautionaryLotto Super 7 · Canada · 2004
CA$10,569,000
She stopped spending only when the balance hit about C$750,000 — and locked that remainder in trust for her children, payable at age 26.
Callie Rogers
CautionaryLotto (UK) · United Kingdom · 2003
£1,875,000
Her GBP 1,875,000 was one of eight equal shares of the GBP 15m guaranteed jackpot in Lotto's 57th Superdraw on 28 June 2003.
Andrew "Jack" Whittaker Jr.
Ended in tragedyPowerball · United States · 2002
$314,900,000
He was already a millionaire before he played: the Associated Press put his West Virginia construction business at about $17 million when he bought the ticket.
Michael Carroll
CautionaryLotto (UK) · United Kingdom · 2002
£9,736,131
One ticket matched all six on 2 November 2002 - so the whole GBP 9,736,131 went to a 19-year-old binman wearing a court-ordered ankle tag.
Richard Lustig
MixedFlorida Mega Money · United States · 2002
$842,153
CNN Money pulled its video of Lustig's lottery tips in 2012 after a backlash from financial writers, who called his method statistically unsound.
David Lee Edwards
Ended in tragedyPowerball · United States · 2001
$295,000,000
He bought the $7 of winning tickets with money borrowed to get his water reconnected, and had burned through about $12 million of the $27 million within a year.
Timothy Schultz
Went wellPowerball · United States · 1999
$28,000,000
He sold himself the winning ticket - he was the gas station attendant working the counter where it was bought.
Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
Ended in tragedyLotto Texas · United States · 1997
$31,000,000
One Christmas after the win he paid for 480 turkey dinners for needy families, and gave a tenth of his first annual cheque to his Pentecostal church.
Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
Ended in tragedyLotto Texas · United States · 1997
$31,000,000
Among his charitable gifts he paid for 480 turkey dinners for needy families; he later sold ten years of his $1.24 million annual cheques to a lump-sum company for $2.25 million.
Jeffrey Dampier Jr.
Ended in tragedyIllinois Lottery jackpot (game not named in sources) · United States · 1996
$20,000,000
He put part of the winnings into Kassie's Gourmet Popcorn, a shop in Tampa's Channelside entertainment district, and was running it when he was killed.
Les Robins
Went wellPowerball · United States · 1993
$111,000,000
Robins was only in the shop for contact lens cleaner — bought with money his fiancée had handed him — when he picked up the record-setting ticket.
Stefan Mandel
Stayed privateVirginia Lottery Lotto (pick 6 of 44) · United States · 1992
$27,000,000
One retail chain pulled out in the final hours, so the syndicate never covered every combination it had planned — and still matched all six numbers.
William "Bud" Post III
CautionaryPennsylvania Lottery · United States · 1988
$16,200,000
The landlady who bought his 40 tickets with his $40 later won a court ruling entitling her to one-third of every lottery payment he received.
Evelyn Adams
CautionaryNew Jersey Pick-6 Lotto · United States · 1985
$5,400,000
UPI headlined her second win as beating odds of one in 15 trillion; she was the first two-time million-dollar jackpot winner among the 22 US states then running lotteries.
Lou Eisenberg
CautionaryNew York Lotto · United States · 1981
$5,000,000
UPI's records list the prize as 20 annual payments of $238,168.74 - there was no lump-sum option in 1981.
Lou Eisenberg
CautionaryNew York Lotto · United States · 1981
$5,000,000
He won on Friday the 13th and went on to star in New York Lottery TV, radio and billboard ads alongside fellow winner Curtis Sharp, who became a lifelong friend.
The famous ruin stories are real, and so is the research that says they are not typical: the widely repeated "70% of winners go broke" figure was disowned by the organisation it is attributed to, while peer-reviewed work on Florida winners found large winners simply postponed bankruptcy rather than avoiding it, and Swedish longitudinal data found sustained improvements in life satisfaction years after a win.
Read these records as case studies with sources attached, not as evidence for a theory. The pattern that does hold across almost all of them is procedural: the winners who kept the money took time before claiming, took advice before spending, and told very few people — which is exactly what the country-by-country playbook sets out.
Amounts are the advertised prize in the currency of the draw (USD, AUD, GBP, CAD, EUR), not adjusted for inflation and not converted between currencies. Where the winner took a lump sum and the figure was published, the cash value is shown on the record. The difference between the two is the single most misunderstood number in the lottery world — why the headline is not what you get.