A now-late man who won the 2002 Christmas morning Powerball jackpot seemed to have it all: until the prize itself became something he’d go on to blame for the misfortune that followed, right up until his passing at the age of 72.
Jack Whittaker was taken aback to wake up on that fateful day and find out that he had just won a life-changing amount – a $315-million jackpot that should have completely turned his life for the better but, instead, made the man reflect on the fact that winning millions of dollars was not that good a thing after all.
Lottery Winner Had It All But Win Changed Much of That
Whittaker’s story is not a traditional lottery story of debauchery, but rather one of self-professed altruism which saw the man immediately donate $15 million for the construction of two churches.
The winner set up the Jack Whittaker Foundation and took it to heart to start helping strangers who had asked for help.
Whittaker went on to hire the clerk who had sold him the winning ticket as an assistant to help him sift through the requests for help, and he ended up donating more than $50 million worth of cars, cash, houses and more.
But things took a bad turn in the second year of Whittaker’s win, when his company – a construction startup which had already shot up the man’s net worth to $17 million prior to the win – began facing a litany of lawsuits.
Whittaker took it all to be a form of bullying, because of his success as a lottery winner and entrepreneur, and began spending a lot of money defending his company’s reputation. He took to drinking, which would ultimately find him a darker path.
“I just got to the point that I just couldn’t tolerate what was happening to me anymore. I would fly off the handle and if somebody wanted to fight me, I’d fight them. I just didn’t care.
Whittaker Blamed Envious Strangers for His Predicaments
Whittaker’s life was a series of unfortunate events from that point on – his granddaughter overdosed, he bounced a $1.5 million check meant for Caesars Atlantic City, and his house burnt to the ground in 2016, years after his wife of 42 years filed for divorce in 2008.
He blamed many of these events on strangers who were envious of his wealth and had found ways to attack him, seeking a share of the pie. In 2007, he argued that it was the greed of these people that had led to his predicaments.
Whittaker eventually died in 2020, after a long illness, with his story one of a life that had been going well before his lottery win, only to turn ugly following the supposedly lucky event.
While Whittaker attributed much of his misfortune to “envious strangers,” reporting also links him to troubling conduct of his own, including alleged inappropriate advances toward bartenders, a bar-fight assault lawsuit, and a charge for threatening to kill a bar manager.