Billie Bob Harrell Jr.

Billie Bob Harrell Jr. of Kingwood, Texas, won the Lotto Texas jackpot drawn on 28 June 1997, an advertised $31 million. He had bought a Quick Pick ticket at a Texaco Star Mart on Loop 494 and discovered the win by checking it against the numbers in the Sunday paper at home. Harrell chose 25 annual payments of about $1.24 million rather than a lump sum, travelling to Austin in July 1997 with his family, his minister and his lawyers to collect the first cheque. He bought a ranch, houses for relatives and new cars, gave a tenth of his first payment to his Pentecostal church and paid for 480 turkey dinners for needy families one Christmas. Requests for money followed from relatives, acquaintances and strangers. In 1999 he agreed to sign over ten years of lottery payments, worth more than $6 million gross, to Stone Street Capital in return for $2.25 million in cash. His marriage broke down in 1998 and divorce proceedings were under way. On 22 May 1999 he was found dead at his Kingwood home; the autopsy recorded a contact shotgun wound to the chest. He had told a financial adviser that winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Deceased. Harrell died by suicide on 22 May 1999, less than two years after the draw, and no later personal status exists. As of 2026 his case is still routinely cited in coverage of lottery winners whose lives unravelled, including a Time feature in 2012 and an NBC round-up of winners whose luck ran out.