Anyone who has ever played the lottery has probably dreamed of what they would do if they won.
Stories about staggering Powerball jackpots evoke images of family compounds, vacation homes, early retirement and vintage cars. The latest narrative involves a $1 billion ticket sold on August 12 at a Hy-Vee gas station in Quincy, Illinois.
But what about the fabled lottery curse? Show me a Powerball winner, common wisdom suggests, and I’ll show you a shattered life: Someone who squandered their fortune, wound up in prison or died a mysterious and untimely death.
One widely quoted data point instructs that one-third of lottery winners (or 70%, depending on the source) lose it all within a few years. But good luck tracing those statistics to a reputable
source.
We wanted to know if the lottery curse was real. So, USA TODAY tracked the fortunes of more than 30 lottery winners over time.
We started with a list of 31 publicly identified Powerball winners who claimed jackpots greater than $50 million in a roughly four-year span between late 2012 and 2016. All have now lived 10 or more years as lottery winners.
We scanned the internet, news databases and public records for follow-up stories, good or bad, telling how the past Powerball winners were doing. We reached out by telephone, text message and email. (That part was hard: Lottery winners tend to keep a low profile.)
We interviewed some winners. We exchanged curt texts with others.
Here’s what we found. This report first appeared in June, so some facts may have changed.
Most lottery winners are doing just fine, thank you
Of the 31 Powerball winners, at least nine have obviously thrived: Lived good lives, celebrated their good fortune and found ways to give back to their communities. At least seven of those winners started charitable foundations, and all nine have made significant gifts to local causes.
We found only two Powerball winners who had seemingly succumbed to the lottery curse, with subsequent setbacks or misfortunes sufficient to spawn national headlines.
One winner, Pedro Quezada of New Jersey, drew waves of bad press after his 2013 jackpot, culminating in a 2017 arrest on charges of sexual assault. His lawyer said the alleged victim made it all up to go after his fortune. The assault charges were later dropped.
Another winner, Marie Holmes of North Carolina, spent millions on a fiancé who was prison-bound. She eventually appeared on an Oprah Winfrey Network show titled "Iyanla, Fix My Life," recounting the ways her life had fallen apart.
We don’t know much about the other 20 Powerball millionaires. At least two are dead. The others are living out of the public eye.
One of the 20 unheralded lottery winners, William ten Broeke, has quietly supported medical research and education through an Atlanta foundation.
Another family lives in a $6 million, 10-bedroom home on 320 acres in rural Tennessee with a private lake, according to a report from a local television station, WHBQ. Several others own million-dollar homes, which suggests they haven't frittered away their fortunes yet.
None of those families has made national headlines in the decade or more since they won Powerball, for reasons good or bad. They seem to be doing fine.
What, then, are we to make of the lottery curse?
The lottery curse is not what you think
It endures in popular culture as a morality tale, woven from threads of tragic lottery-winner narratives that end in broken families, dashed fortunes or death. The lesson: easy come, easy go.
If there is a lottery curse, lottery winners say, it’s not the kind of hex that leaves you penniless, friendless or dead, at least not for most winners.
For those who have endured it, the lottery curse is more akin to spending a few weeks of your life in celebrity hell.
A big lottery win can be overwhelming. Most winners aren't used to handling millions of dollars, let alone the crush of publicity that comes with a Powerball jackpot.
"When you have money, it doesn't solve all of your problems," said Thomas Murphy, a certified financial planner in Dallas who has worked with lottery winners. "It solves some of your problems. And it introduces a whole host of new problems with which you have absolutely no background or experience."
When you win Powerball and your name leaks out, your phone rings off the hook. Your Facebook page and email inbox fill with messages from long-lost relatives and complete strangers. Your doorbell rings at odd hours. And everyone wants a piece of your winnings.
Susan Brands of St. Charles, Missouri, won a $96.5 million Powerball jackpot in 2014. In the days that followed, she said, "we had all kinds of letters from people who said God told them we were going to give them money."
But the curse eventually lifts. And then, most winners are more or less free to live their lottery dreams.
"I've been there with people who have gotten the check, and seen the look on their faces, the realization of how their lives have now changed, and their grandchildren's lives have now changed," said Stephen Durrell, executive director of the Kansas Lottery and chair of the Powerball Product Group. "And it's a tremendous feeling."
Living la vida Powerball
Here are nine Powerball winners who have made the most of their jackpots. To all appearances, they have lived well, fulfilled bucket lists and given back to their communities.
John and Susan Brands, St. Charles, Missouri
When the Brands learned they had won a $96.5 million Powerball jackpot, one March morning in 2014, they walked around their home in daze. Then, they had a celebratory meal at a Waffle House.
"Because who doesn’t love a good waffle?" Susan Brands told USA TODAY.
They had heard about the lottery curse. Shortly after they claimed their prize, the Brands began to understand what it meant.
John Brands, 49 at the time, quit his job as a civil engineer. At 7 a.m. the next morning, the phone rang. It was the daughter of his former boss, who was a financial adviser and wanted their business.
"We had people showing up at our house," Susan Brands said. "A man – I felt really bad for him – he said he had his two little girls with him, and they were flat broke, and he used his last two dollars to buy gas to get to our home."
She gave him the money in her wallet. Then, the couple took their dogs and retreated to a hotel. But the entreaties continued: A pastor in Louisiana who said God had told him the Brands were going to give him money. A friend who had endured a divorce and thought the Brands should pay off her mortgage. Dozens of strangers sent Facebook messages seeking cash.
To this day, the Brands don’t answer the door unless they are expecting someone.
Susan Brands has a theory for why people come out of the woodwork seeking handouts from lottery winners.
"It’s because we won the money," she said. "They feel entitled to a piece of the pie, because you won it. You didn’t earn the money."
The worst episode that followed the Powerball win, Brands said, was a protracted legal battle with an interior designer. The designer said the Brands were difficult clients. The Brands said the designer was after their money. A jury ultimately found in the Brands’ favor, awarding them about $13,500 in damages.
"When you win the lottery," Brands said, "you become a target."
The Brands started a foundation as a way to give back. They support local hospitals and food banks, the Stray Dog Theatre in nearby St. Louis, Doctors Without Borders and animal rescues.
Their biggest lottery-winner extravagance was hiring a private jet to Las Vegas to sit in the front row at an Eagles concert.
"We have bought a couple outrageous things, but nothing crazy," Susan Brands said. "We bought a property that has a lake on it, and we love that, but we consider it an investment property."
She credits their level-headed, middle-class upbringing for keeping the family finances on track.
"Having this enormous amount of money. . . I don’t know," she said. "I still use coupons at the grocery store."
Roy Cockrum, Knoxville, Tennessee
On a trip to London in 2004, Roy Cockrum witnessed a breathtaking performance of the play "His Dark Materials," with 40 actors, abundant sets and a young audience that roared its approval at the end.
"And I just knew that no American theater could ever work at that level," Cockrum said in an interview. "I made a mental note that if ever I had two nickels to rub together, I would work to try to help American theaters aspire to that same quality and size."
With a Powerball win a decade later, at age 58, Cockrum had $260 million to rub together.
Cockrum had studied theater at Northwestern University and worked as a struggling actor. He also spent time as an Episcopal monk: He was in his robes when he saw the London play. He eventually left the monastery and was caring for his elderly mother when he learned he held a winning ticket.
"I literally fell to my knees," he said.
He immediately knew how he wanted to spend the money. Cockrum took half of his after-tax prize, roughly $60 million, and opened a foundation. Its purpose: funding ambitious theater projects in the United States.
Among lottery winners who have given back, Cockrum and his foundation stand out. To date, it has awarded 56 grants totaling more than $34 million.
To avoid a deluge of applications from every theater in America, Cockrum decided to make grants by invitation. He met with artistic directors one by one, asking if there was a project they had dreamed of doing and assumed they could not afford.
"I got very emotional responses to that question," he said.
Two plays Cockrum supported, "Ink" and "Prayer for the French Republic," have reaped Tony Award honors.
"These really are important projects," Cockrum said, "to the people who have dreamed them up and created them."
The Smith family, Trenton, New Jersey
The Smiths rank among the most visible lottery winners in America.
Most Powerball millionaires do a swift disappearing act, vanishing from the public eye, changing phone numbers, dropping off social media and hoping the world will forget they ever existed.
Not the Smiths. The Smith Family Foundation has played a leadership role in Trenton, New Jersey, for a decade. Collectively and individually, the Smiths have given away more than $17 million.
Recipients include a local YMCA and athletic center, churches, schools and human services organizations. The foundation focuses on training nonprofit leaders, and on helping Trenton students finish college and find local internships.
"We are sixth-generation Trentonians, so we want to make sure that we make an impact there," said Katherine Nunnally, one of seven Smith children and the foundation’s executive director, in an interview.
Nunnally was a schoolteacher. Many of the foundation’s projects show an educator’s touch: backpacks and computers for at-risk students, care packages for first-generation college attenders, and space for high schoolers to do homework and meet with tutors.
"I think it was something we were born to do," Nunnally said. "There comes a point where it’s like, what else can you buy? You have to do something that’s meaningful, something that’s fulfilling, something to help humanity."
Mark and Cindy Hill, Dearborn, Missouri
The Hills were the sort of couple that would have considered $1,000 a major windfall. Cindy, 51, was an office manager. Mark, 52, toiled in a hot dog factory. They were in and out of work.
One day in 2012, they won a $294 million Powerball jackpot. Their lump sum payout worked out to roughly $390,000 for every citizen of Dearborn, Missouri, population 496.
The Hills chose to stay in Dearborn, outside Kansas City. They launched a foundation and decided to focus their lottery largesse on Mark Hill’s neighboring hometown of Camden Point.
"I didn’t do anything to earn this," Mark Hill told a local newspaper. "It’s not like I found a cure for cancer or anything — winning the lottery doesn’t make me special. It makes me lucky, fortunate, extremely blessed, but not special."
"It’s a situation where, if we had to do it ourselves, it would take 25 years," said Walt Stubbs, the local fire chief, speaking to the Chicago Tribune in 2013.
The Hills funded a scholarship at the high school they had both attended.
But this Powerball story has a sad ending. Mark Hill died in 2019, at the untimely age of 59.
Carl and Lulu Mitchell, Clovis, California
After they won a $213 million Powerball jackpot in 2013, the Mitchells kept a low profile. Over the years, though, news of their charity work began to leak out.
Their giving has focused on health care. Carl, 68 at the time of the jackpot, had worked as a technologist, Lulu as a registered nurse.
Through their foundation, the couple have donated at least $2 million to the medical centers that once employed them, funding early cancer detection and breast cancer technology, among other projects.
Lulu is a breast cancer survivor. Carl lost both parents to cancer.
"Those experiences gave us perspective," Carl said in a release accompanying one of the donations. "And it’s eye-opening when you realize that your life is on the line and these are the people and treatments that can save you."
David and Erica Harrig, Gretna, Nebraska
The Harrigs went a little crazy after winning a $61 million Powerball jackpot in 2013. They quit their jobs, bought a new home, some farmland and a Corvette, and they binged on cruises.
After that, they settled down. The new house sat in their hometown of Gretna, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. Dave Harrig, 48, became a volunteer firefighter.
The couple followed a cardinal rule of investing. In the years after their windfall, they spent the interest but kept the principal. They didn’t tap the actual winnings until they contributed to a new firefighting museum in their hometown.
"We have nicer things, a bigger house, and more than we ever had in the past," Dave Harrig told the Associated Press nearly a decade after their win. "But we are the same, and my wife and I keep each other in check."
Dave Honeywell, Fredericksburg, Virginia
After Dave Honeywell won a $217 million Powerball jackpot in 2013, he set about fulfilling a classic lottery-winner’s dream.
Honeywell, 53, bought a shuttered island resort called Mar Vista, a cluster of rustic waterfront cabins and homes in Washington State, for a reported $6 million. Then, he set about building a family compound.
By 2014, the Honeywells and their compound were ensnared in local controversy. State officials fined them for cutting down trees on a stretch of protected shoreline.
"Not long after he bought the Mar Vista," a local NPR station reported, "Honeywell proceeded to mar the vista."
The family ruffled more feathers on San Juan Island by proposing to build a nearly 300-foot dock "jutting out into an orca habitat," the broadcaster reported. After fielding more than 100 public comments, the county revoked its approval.
The dust-ups might have driven the Honeywells away from their island paradise, more casualties of the lottery curse.
But the controversy eventually calmed. And in the years since, the Honeywells have quietly given back to the island, supporting the local arts community, food bank and animal shelter and giving scholarships through their foundation. The foundation dispenses $350,000 to $500,000 a year, according to the family's attorney, Stephanie Johnson O’Day.
The family declined an interview. "They’re very private people," O’Day said in an email.
John 'Jack' Long, Fontana, California
Jack Long, 76, had to avoid the Inland Empire heat because of a health condition. To stay cool, he made regular trips to the market in his power wheelchair to buy popsicles.
On one of those trips, in 2014, he bought a winning Powerball ticket.
The pot was worth $60 million. He took a lump sum, $35.9 million before taxes. He said he would use the money to buy cars for his daughters, a house for his grandkids and a trip to Italy. He said he liked his own house and car just fine.
Then, Long set up the Fontana Foundation of Hope. The foundation donated more than $5 million in and around Fontana, California, outside San Bernardino. He gave to a local children’s fund, to baseball and softball leagues and public-school programs.
Long apparently did buy at least one thing for himself: A faster wheelchair.
He died in 2023, at age 83.
James Stocklas, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
One evening in 2016, dining at a sports bar in the Florida Keys, James Stocklas, 67, glimpsed a yacht on the water.
He said, "I need to hit the lottery for this," and snapped a photo on his phone, according to an account in a local paper.
Hours later, Stocklas bought a lottery ticket that would win him $291 million.
Stocklas learned he had won the Powerball jackpot as he sat in a diner in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He celebrated by buying breakfast for his fellow diners.
He had grown up in public housing, with a father who worked for Bethlehem Steel. After working in the steel mill himself, Stocklas quit and entered public life, eventually serving in the county council and as a district judge.
Stocklas was retired by the time of his Powerball win, which netted a lump-sum payment of $191 million. Stocklas split it with two friends who had joined in a lottery pool. After taxes, the winnings worked out to about $40 million each.
He lives now in a $5 million waterfront home in the Florida Keys, according to property records.
"Doing well," he said in a text message. "Charitable endeavors, property investment, yes, buying breakfast, and loads of donations to worthwhile people and events."
Lawsuits and tabloid headlines: the lottery curse?
James Stocklas gained some celebrity for his Powerball win, but all of it was positive, and the coverage quickly faded.
Not every lottery winner is so lucky.
Pedro Quezada, Passaic, New Jersey
Of all the Powerball millionaires profiled here, Pedro Quezada’s story arguably makes the strongest case for the lottery curse.
Quezada, 44, won a $338 million Powerball jackpot in 2013. It sounded like a storybook narrative, an American dream fulfilled. An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Quezada had toiled 18 hours a day running a bodega in New Jersey.
Then came the tabloid headlines.
A woman stepped forward claiming Quezada owed $30,000 in back child support. A judge ordered him to pay it.
Another former romantic partner sued Quezada, saying she deserved a share of the winnings. They later reconciled, and she dropped the suit.
Quezada’s former neighbors said he backed out of a pledge to cover their rent, the Daily Mail reported. A former landlord said he’d skipped out on his own rent.
The biggest bombshell dropped in 2017. A woman alleged Quezada had sexually molested her for three years, starting when she was 11. He was charged with multiple counts of sexual assault.
Quezada’s lawyer, Steven Wukovits, said he was innocent: the woman had made up the sexual assault allegations, Wukovits said, to go after his Powerball money.
"The greatest day is when you win the lottery," Wukovits told The New York Times, "and the saddest day is every day thereafter."
Those charges were later dropped. Quezada reportedly has returned to the Dominican Republic and is "enjoying his life there," Wukovits told USA TODAY in an email.
Marie Holmes, Shallotte, North Carolina
At the moment when she won a $188 million Powerball jackpot, in 2015, Marie Holmes was working five low-paying jobs. She had been living in a mobile home with her mother and children.
Holmes, 26, had ambitious plans for the winnings. She was going to give to her church and to charities, finish her college degree, buy her mother a bigger home and "secure the future" for herself and her four kids, according to a Powerball release.
A year later, she was on an Oprah Winfrey Network reality show titled "Iyanla, Fix My Life," recounting the ways her life had fallen apart.
Iyanla Vanzant, the program’s host, chided Holmes for squandering much of her fortune, buying properties and paying allowances to hangers-on. Holmes also spent millions of dollars repeatedly bailing her fiancé out of jail before he went to prison on drug charges.
The couple broke up, and the ex-fiancé sued, claiming she had bought him – and now owed him – a $600,000 automotive business, a $250,000 Chevrolet Stingray, two dump trucks worth $125,000, $100,000 in jewelry and clothes, and 77 acres of property to build a dirt bike track.
The bad headlines eventually faded, and Holmes retreated from the public eye. Today, her Powerball story is another cautionary tale, fodder for those perennial roundup stories you find online about the fabled lottery curse.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is there a lottery curse? We tracked 31 Powerball winners to find out
