Abraham Lee Shakespeare

Abraham Lee Shakespeare was a 43-year-old labourer and truck driver's helper with a criminal record and, by the accounts of those who knew him, barely able to read. On 15 November 2006, on a delivery run with driver Michael Ford, he put in $2 from a wallet holding $5 for two Florida Lotto tickets bought at a convenience store in Frostproof. One matched all six numbers for a $30 million jackpot. Shakespeare took the lump sum of about $17 million rather than annual payments of roughly $1.5 million. Ford sued, claiming Shakespeare had taken the ticket from his wallet; on 19 October 2007 a jury rejected the claim after little more than an hour. Shakespeare gave and lent money away steadily, including six-figure sums to relatives, a $1 million gift to his stepfather and mortgage payoffs for friends, and within two years most of it had gone. In 2008 Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore approached him through his realtor, saying she wanted to write a book about him, and took control of his finances through a company set up in his name. He was last seen in April 2009 and reported missing on 9 November 2009. On 26 January 2010 his body was found under a concrete slab behind a Plant City property linked to Moore, shot twice in the chest.

Moore was arrested in February 2010, convicted of first-degree murder in December 2012 and sentenced to life without parole plus a 25-year minimum for using a firearm in the felony. Interviewed by ABC News from prison in April 2025, she still maintained her innocence; three appeals had failed, the most recent in 2023 (2025).