Biggest Lottery Winners Worldwide
Winning a lottery or real casino might sound like the best thing that could ever happen in your life. And in a way, it truly is one of the best things because you get lots and lots of money for just picking the right numbers on a small card. It doesn’t get easier than that because all you need is luck and nothing else. Even though the chance of winning is really low, lotteries are totally worth buying from time to time because the wins sometimes are simply ridiculous. Just take a look at our list of the biggest wins, that’s crazy, to say the least.
Biggest Lottery Winners of the Last Decade
- Anonymous Winner from North Carolina ($1.537 billion)
The biggest lottery win in the history of the US was claimed just last year by the anonymous winner. The unknown winner only communicates through a lawyer, so nobody knows who he or she is. This is reasonable if you think about it. The winner had two options: either to withdraw the whole win or to receive smaller payments during the next 30 years, which would still be substantial money every year. Lucky feller has chosen the first option.
- Lerynne West ($687 million)
Lerynne West, 51, won an astounding jackpot while she was having pizza with her sister. She just moved into her first house she bought for herself and decided to celebrate it with pizza and a lottery ticket. As it soon turned out, she pulled out one of the biggest lottery wins in history. I guess she can now buy herself a new house for every day of the year.
- Robert Bailey ($343.8)
Robert Bailey, 67, won the biggest lottery jackpot in New York history in 2018. What this man did is just crazy: he would buy lottery tickets for over 25 years, and he would always pick the same numbers. Every week, for 25 years straight, this man has been at it, and the day has come when his numbers brought him enormous wealth. This strategy might just be the best for either lotteries or online gambling.
- Mavis Wanczyk ($758.7 million)
Mavis Wanczyk, 53, pulled out a huge win in the Powerball lottery in 2017. This was one of the biggest wins in the history of the country, and as Wanczyk herself said, she was terrified when she realized she won so much money. She immediately said her boss she’s not coming back and left. She decided to pick up the lump sum and lived happily ever after.
- Merle and Patricia Butler ($656 million)
Merle and Patricia Butler are a retired couple from Illinois who claimed one of the biggest jackpots of the decade in 2012. After they learned about their huge blast of luck, they had a couple of days to figure things out, hire a financial advisor and a lawyer, and then came up to claim their reward.
- Jack Whittaker ($314.9 million)
The story of Jack Whittaker, 55, is the sad one. He was already a rich guy with a net worth of over 17$ million. After he won, his life started to go downhill: he was robbed a couple of times, his house burned down, some of his relatives died, and all sorts of bad luck kept on happening to him. Right now, it’s hard to tell what happened to him, but the money sure did not bring him too much happiness.
Did you notice all of those huge winners are older people? I did, and I’m really curious why there are no young people winning those huge prizes. Either way, here you have it — the list of the biggest lottery wins of the decade. For most of us, it’s hard to even imagine what it feels like to just have this much money, but judging from what happens to most of those people afterward, this might be a good thing.