Who wants to be a millionaire? The dark side of lottery wins

A lucky punter from Munster has won €250 million (£215 million) in the EuroMillions lottery – the largest EuroMillions jackpot win in Ireland. But will the as-yet-unknown winner come to see their sudden good fortune as a blessing or a curse?

Once you've won the lottery, "you're screwed", said Metro. Hitting such a massive jackpot can "turn out to be a deal with the devil": many winners' lives have taken "a turn for the worse after scooping a large sum".

Ransoms and murder

Lee Ryan, one of the first big winners of The National Lottery, won a "whopping" £6.5 million in the UK draw in 1995, said The Mirror. He splashed his newfound wealth on luxury cars, a helicopter and a £2 million mansion but a string of failed investments left him penniless and sleeping rough in London. Now working as a painter and decorator, he told the paper his jackpot win was "cursed".

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In 2002, rubbish collector Michael Carroll hit the headlines with his lottery win of £9.7 million but, nine years later, he was declared bankrupt. During that time, he'd married, separated, and appeared in court more than 30 times. Proclaiming himself the "King of Chavs", he'd developed a taste for cocaine, vodka and "Roman-style orgies".

All told, you "probably actually don't want to win the lottery", said The Atlantic in 2012, citing the case of American Evelyn Adams, who raked in $5.4 million (£4.6 million) by winning the New Jersey lottery twice, in 1985 and 1986, but gambled most of it away and ended up living in a trailer.

Some jackpot winners become targets for criminals. Abraham Shakespeare won $31 million (£27 million) in a Florida lottery in 2006, then disappeared in 2009; his body was found under a concrete patio slab with bullet holes in his chest. The woman convicted of his murder was also accused of taking money from his account, said ABC News. In Australia in 1960, the eight-year-old son of a couple who'd won the equivalent of £1.5 million was kidnapped on his way to school. The couple received a "hefty ransom demand" but the child was later found dead, said Metro.

Increased 'life satisfaction'

Despite many such stories of "cursed" lottery windfalls, increasing evidence seems to point to a much happier ending for most.

It's often claimed that 70% of lottery winners end up bankrupt within a few years but the National Endowment for Financial Education in America, the supposed source of this claim, cannot verify it and said that statistic is "not backed" by its research.

A 2021 study, published by the German Institute of Labor Economics research institute, suggests that winning the lottery could strengthen close relationships and social ties, and a long-term review of Swedish lottery winners, published in The Review of Economic Studies, found that most choose to keep working and generally enjoy "sustained increases in overall life satisfaction".

It's undoubtedly "psychologically useful" for the less fortunate to imagine they'd be "worse off with more money", said Martha Gill in The Observer. It's also "rather helpful cover for the rich" and shields them "from too much envy". But the "platitude that money doesn't buy happiness" doesn't seem to stand up to reality.

"The snobbish idea that people on low incomes don't know how to handle large amounts of cash" is also "corrosive". The same line of thinking reinforces the idea that charities shouldn't give money to those in need, because they'll "waste it". Actually, getting your hands on some cash is a "rather reliable way to improve your life. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."