Crackpot Hit the Jackpot, Has Winner’s Remorse

There are enough cases in which people who hit large lottery jackpots wound up dead or dead broke within seven years to explode the old cliché that “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

The newspaper stories that recount the ruination of those who hit big—victims of their own inability to manage the windfall wisely, or the greed of friends and relatives who talk them into sharing too much of it, or the darker impulses of those same people: lottery winner poisoned by blood relatives or murdered through other means by a new romantic partner who tricks him into signing over his assets to her before doing the deed—provide a recurring reminder to be careful what you wish for.