William "Bud" Post III

William "Bud" Post III claimed a $16.2 million share of a Pennsylvania Lottery jackpot in February 1988. The total pool of more than $32 million was the second-largest in state history; the other half went to a group of 16 employees of the Westinghouse Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory. Post took the prize as 26 annual instalments of $497,953.47. Within two weeks he had spent more than $300,000 on a liquor licence, a Florida restaurant lease for siblings, a used-car lot and a twin-engine plane he could not fly; within three months he was $500,000 in debt. He paid $395,000 for a 16-room mansion in Oil City. In 1989 Karpik sued, and after a three-year fight a court awarded her one-third of the proceeds and froze his payments. His brother Jeffrey was jailed for hiring a hitman to kill Post and his sixth wife. Post went bankrupt, emerged with about $1 million, and in 1996 sold the mansion for $65,000 and auctioned his 17 remaining lottery payments for roughly $2.65 million. He was convicted of firing a shotgun at a debt collector and began a prison term in 1998. He died of respiratory failure on 15 January 2006, aged 66, about $1 million in debt.

Post died on 15 January 2006 at a Pittsburgh-area hospital, aged 66; the January 2006 obituaries reported him living on a $450-a-month disability cheque and roughly $1 million in debt at the end.