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Comment by 77pt77 | Hacker News Reader

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77pt77·

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-12-13/lottery-w...

This man had his entire life destroyed after winning the lottery.

Apart from divorce, other men sued him for ruining their marriages by making them look like losers and actually won!

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What's interesting to me is that all this happened after he already had a $17M net worth (20 years ago, so worth almost double that now with inflation, and in a low-cost-of-living area), per the Wikipedia article. That's far more money than I'll ever see. How does more money materially change the life of someone like that? It sounds like his troubles were the effect of publicity after winning the lottery, not wealth.

According to him, no one really knew he had that much money.

I find that highly dubious because in my experience bank clerks talk a lot and there is effectively no banking secrecy.

> other men sued him for ruining their marriages by making them look like losers and actually won

Wait, what?!

I'm having trouble finding a primary source, but you can find people claiming that.

I would not be surprised because, trial by jury.

Couldn't find a primary source either, but that would be one of the first cases where the phrase "suffering from success" applies unironically.

There aren’t juries in Sweden from what I understand

This was in the US though.

Whittaker sounds to have had a lot of issues that had nothing to do with lottery.

To me it sounds like one of those cases that likely got widely distorted in media. I have seen it multiple times where when you dig into the case, it turned out to be something else entirely.

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