Son of a Son of a Gambler
Winners, Losers, and What to do When You Win the Lottery: A World with Gamblers, Kentuckians, Addicts, Cincinnati, Al Gore, Larry Flynt, and the Scissor Sisters
—Don McNay —
Smashwords Edition
Published by: RRP International, LLC.
Son of a Son of a Gambler
Copyright © 2010 RRP International, LLC.
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ISBN 978-0-9793644-1-9
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To my father, Joe McNay, my mother Ollie McNay and my sister Theresa McNay-Francis.
Somewhere in heaven, my father is telling funny stories, my sister is bragging on her children and my mother is waiting for the day when Tom Jones shows up.
Everything in this book should be historically accurate. However, my father liked to embellish and was a primary source of information. Thus, the opening line of the movie, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Beam shall serve as a disclaimer.
“If it is not the way it was, it is the way it should have been.”
INTRODUCTION
“Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks; yes, I learned much from both of their styles.”
-Jimmy Buffett, “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” 1978
I’ve met a lot of heroes and crooks.
If my childhood had been filmed as a reality series, we would have beaten the Sopranos in the ratings.
Before there was a modern Las Vegas, there was Northern Kentucky. That’s where I grew up. The area was controlled by mobsters. My father, like his father before him, made his bones working in the bingo halls, bars and gambling joints of Covington and Newport.
When the gangsters were run out of town in the 1960’s, dad started his own gambling enterprises. He eventually went legit and did well in the travel business.
I was surrounded by colorful people, but I didn’t know they were colorful.
I thought everyone had names like “Peanuts,” “Lucky,” “Jelly” and “Screen Door Smitty.”
I moved away for college and never came back. I got into the worlds of money and personal finance. Now I specialize in helping people who receive settlements and large lump sums.
My father’s world was the mean streets, and my world is one of lawyers, actuaries, and financiers.
Those worlds collided at dad’s 1993 funeral.
As they were getting ready to take his coffin down the aisle of the church, a prosecutor friend asked to talk to me. I told him I was busy. He got in my face and said “Don, I need to talk to you now!”
He pointed across the church and said, “Don, who is that?”
They had seated my friend behind a fellow we’ll call “Stun-Gun.” That is not the man’s real name or nickname. I don’t want to wear a cement overcoat, so that is as much information as you will get.
“Stun-Gun” was a reputed mobster in a major city. You could tell he was a reputed mobster from 100-yards away. He and my dad vacationed and shot craps together.
My prosecutor friend had overheard “Stun-Gun” say, “I hope the FBI doesn’t have the pews wired. . . . If God sees who is in this church, the walls are going to come crumbling down.”
Many of my friends had been in a church, but for dad’s friends, it was a maiden voyage.
My world and my father’s world meet at many junctures.
Dad was a gambler and I have helped lottery winners with their finances.
You won’t read stories about my clients in the papers. I do everything to keep who they are confidential. My father said never to “flash your roll” in public and it is good advice.
In this book, you’ll read about some lottery “losers” who went public and probably regret it.
I’ll tell you not to play the lottery, but give you some pointers -- in case you ignore my advice and then hit the jackpot.
People in dad’s world had problems with addictions and money. People in my world have those problems too.
The rich and famous have passed through our lives. Dad’s friends were local Cincinnati celebrities and a Kentuckian who made it big in pornography, Larry Flynt. I spent time with rockers like the Scissor Sisters and politicians like Al Gore.
I love rock and roll, and start each of my newspaper columns with a rock lyric to set the theme.
I compare this book to “concept” albums like the Eagles’ Hotel California, The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell. The albums each had a wide range of songs, but all of them tied back to the album’s central theme.
In this book, I touch a variety of topics that all go back to the same idea.
So, to borrow from Jimmy Buffett, you could say my theme, and my reality, is that I’m the son of the son of a gambler.
Section One
Lottery Winners
What to Do When You Win the Lottery
I tell everyone that buying lottery tickets is a bad idea.
If you ignore my advice, play anyway and win the big jackpot, this advice is for you.
You would think that after having overcome trillion-to-one odds, the idea of running through millions of dollars would seem silly. Studies reportedly show that 90% of lottery winners blow all their money within five years of winning the jackpot.
I have counseled some lottery winners. Here are a few tips I have given them:
1. Never let anyone know you won.
Every lottery winner who goes public eventually reports that they have had people harassing them.
Powerball winner Jack Whittaker said, “There should be a book to tell you how to handle it when people get thrown into the limelight.”
You are asking for trouble if you have a news conference and tell the world that you have a bunch of money that you never planned on having.
The news conference is good for the lottery officials promoting their product, and it provides a good story for the media. It will not, however, turn out so well for you.
Bowling Green, Kentucky attorney Steve Thornton announced a few years ago that one of his clients had won the Kentucky lottery. Steve set up a corporation and protected the client’s identity.
If you win the lottery, find someone who can give you the same privacy. Your life will be much happier. If you decide that you want to be famous, you will have enough money to fund your own reality show.
2. Take the annual payments, not the lump sum.
Never take a lump sum. The annual payments are a better deal.
Lottery winners are totally unprepared for sudden wealth.
If you take the money as a lump sum, and are overcome by lust, drugs, sex, bad friends, bad family, bad investments or other factors, then the money will be gone, and there will be no way to get it back.
If you take annual payments and run through the first check, you have 29 more chances to get it right. It gives you time to organize a plan and take advantage of ways to save taxes and improve return.
Even if you ignored my advice and bought a lottery ticket, listen to me on this one.
3. Spend money on some good advice.
There are a ton of tax breaks for the wealthy. When you win the lottery, you need to find advisors who can get those tax breaks for you.
Getting good advice does not mean calling the bookkeeper for your bowling league. You need someone who has dealt with big money and is not trying to learn while they earn.
Big-time advisors do not advertise in the phone book under “Help for Lottery Winners,” but if you ask some well-respected attorneys, you will eventually get referred to the kind of advisor you need.
There are people who are good at helping rich people become richer; get one of them working for you.
4. Use your money for a purpose.
There was a great book written in the 1980’s by Ami Domini called The Challenges of Wealth. It was a groundbreaking study of sudden wealth written during a time when few studies were available on the subject.
Her research showed that rich people are happiest when they help a cause that they really believe in. The most joyful people were those who gave money for scholarships, helped their church and formed non-profit groups.
You can leave your children enough money to be comfortable without spoiling them. People who leave their families too much money wind up with children like Paris Hilton.
If you study history, you will find that most of the people who amassed great fortunes, like Carnegie and Rockefeller, gave substantial amounts of money to charity while they were still alive. Even more gave money to charity upon death.
You have an opportunity to take care of family and have plenty left over to make an impact on society. It will make you content and make the world a better place.
One last thought:
Winning the lottery is a random event. It has nothing to do with skill, hard work or talent.
If you ever start feeling cocky about your brains and good fortune, remember that I told you not to buy the ticket in the first place.
A Trust Can Make Life a Dance for a Lottery Winner
Life’s a dance you learn as you go.
Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow.
-John Michael Montgomery
For years, I have been giving advice to lottery winners. Usually, the advice is ignored and people learn as they go.
Now someone has followed my advice.
Someone purchased a lottery ticket near Cincinnati and won a $148.1 million jackpot. They did not claim the money themselves.
Instead, they set up a trust at a bank and had a bank trust officer cash the winning ticket.
The trust officer was prohibited from giving out the name of the winner, as was the lottery commission. No one knows who or where the winner is.
The winner eliminated many problems with one smart decision.
Almost all lottery winners rush to the lottery office the second they figure out that they have won.
They often have a news conference where they jump up and down like participants on a television game show; not Jeopardy, but one of those shows where you don’t need to be smart.
These new millionaires get their “professional” financial advice from newfound family and friends.
These new advisors often have other careers as strippers and bartenders which explains why an estimated 90% of lottery winners run through the money in less than five years.
I tell winners not to have a news conference, but they have it anyway. They can’t resist the chance to be on television and impress people with their intelligence and good intentions.
Although it does not take a rocket scientist to randomly pick numbers, winners seemed compelled to show off their special prowess.
Since flashing money in public is a sure sign that you are an idiot, one can see why con artists go after lottery winners.
The winners universally say that they are going help their families and give money to charities.
Winners must have family members and charities related to booze and the sex and narcotics industries, as that is where a lot of lottery money seems to go. My bet is that only about 10% of the winners actually give money to benefit society.
The rest blow their money being stupid.
I tell people not to have news conferences and to get a professional financial advisor. I also tell people not to play the lottery at all.
Millions of people ignore my advice.
The winner in Cincinnati acted as if they had listened to me. WLW radio in Cincinnati has had me on several times; maybe someone heard me.
Since we don’t know who the winners are, they are not going to come forward and give me credit. So I will take credit for it anyway. If they did not listen to me, they listened to someone who knew what they were doing.
My one argument would have been their decision to take payments from the lottery in a lump sum instead of payments over 30 years. Payments over time are usually a better tax and financial planning strategy.
About 98% of lottery winners ignore me, but it is good advice anyway.
I shouldn’t knock the strategy of the unknown winner because the trust is a great tool.
Restrictions can be set up, and with good management, the money could be in their family for generations to come.
The winner has a shot at maintaining wealth, since no one will know that they have it. They will miss the thrill of acting stupid in public, but it is a great trade off. They won’t have charities and leeches harassing them. They won’t have the opportunity to establish “deep” bonding experiences with long lost friends and relatives.
Instead, they will enjoy the money in private. If they feel compelled to go to a strip bar and flash a few hundred thousand, as West Virginia Powerball winner Jack Whitaker liked to do, they can pretend that they actually earned the money.
Keeping quiet is the first advice I give anyone getting a large amount of money, be it from the lottery, an injury settlement, or an inheritance.
A large lump sum is a one-time experience, and most people either learn or don’t learn as they go.
Their lives should be a dance, not a fire walk.
Taming the Lottery Tiger
“I've got a tiger by the
tail, it's plain to see.
I
won't be much when you get through with me.”
-Buck Owens
When Buck Owens died, tributes were made to his great musical skills. Few knew that Buck was also a disciplined businessman. He owned television and radio stations and was a sharp investor.
I doubt Buck ever stood in line to buy lottery tickets.
The lottery can be the worst thing that ever happened to both lottery winners and lottery losers.
I hate the lottery. I hate the big Powerball jackpots with a zillion to one odds. I hate watching winners completely screw up their lives like Jack Whitaker did.
I hate standing in line watching people buy instant winner tickets. There is a thrill to instant winner tickets that absolutely escapes me.
I can see spending a dollar on a chance to be super rich. I can’t see what attracts people to win two dollars and then give it back to the clerk to buy two more dollars worth of tickets; especially as I wait in line behind them.
I hate watching people be exploited by those who run lotteries. People go on television with an oversized check and expose their lives to the public. I hate the media making celebrities out of people who happened to pick a lucky number.
The winners are not role models. They were just lucky. Every time someone wins a lottery, the media should black out the faces of the winners and run a story about someone who built their own business or someone who helped to make the world better.
It would be better for society and better for the lottery winners too.
Building a business takes hard work and talent. Even inheriting wealth requires good genetics. Most people who inherit money have time to plan for their eventual fortune.
Lottery winners receive their money suddenly and are thrown into a media circus.
I hate the television interviews that lottery winners give. The winners always have reasonable sounding goals, like paying off their mortgage or educating their children. They never mention booze and strip joints.
They might be serious about doing something good with their money. It is just that temptation, greedy friends and bad advice get in the way.
When you get financial planning advice from bartenders and strippers, things can get lost in translation.
I always recommend that lottery winners not take the money in a lump sum and not tell anyone they won.
The lottery organizers came up with a game I almost like. It is called “Win for Life.”
In “Win for Life,” the winner gets a $1000 a week ($52,000 a year) for the rest of their lives. They are guaranteed a $1 million payout.
It is the same kind of “structured settlement” concept that works for helping injured people.
Giving someone $1000 a week will improve their lifestyle but will not cause freeloaders and hucksters to knock down their door. If a person blows $1000, they get another $1000 the next week and have the rest of their lives to get it right.
I liked the Win for Life idea so much that I thought about buying a ticket. Then I looked at the odds.
The odds of actually “winning for life” are 5,200,000 to one.
I will hang on to my dollar.
Although I love the concept, I suspect Win for Life will not be successful. Lottery players either want huge jackpots or the immediate gratification that instant games provide.
Lotteries are many people’s “Tiger by the Tail.”
The biggest winners in the lottery are not those who buy the tickets. The ultimate big winner is someone who can buy their own lottery.
Buying Your Own Lottery: A Comeback for Robber Barons
“Yes, I am a pirate. Two hundred years too late. Cannons don’t thunder; there is nothing to plunder.”
-Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett’s character in the song “A Pirate Looks at 40” laments the fact that he missed the era of high-seas piracy.
Like Buffett’s “pirate,” there are modern businesspeople who wish they were living in the time of industrial “robber barons.”
Now those wannabes could get their chance. With proposals to privatize state lotteries, 21st century robber barony may be ripe for a comeback.
19th century robber barons had their gains subsidized by the government. They were given land, inside deals, and special considerations that made it impossible to lose money. In return, the robber barons cycled money back to politicians in the form of bribes, gifts, and campaign contributions.
The “money for favors” cycle has been around since time immemorial, but no one put it into practice like the robber barons. In a time when railroad construction put huge money on the table for government officials, there was always plenty to steal and pass around.
Everyone was happy except for the taxpayers.
I thought the robber barons might have gone the way of pirates until the story broke about the state of Illinois wanting to sell its lottery to private owners. Illinois wants roughly $10 billion for the lottery. If I can scrape up the $10 billion and get connected to the right politicians, I want to buy it. There is no way to lose.
Most businesses start with a dream, a prayer, and then a test in an unknown market. In this case, however, Illinois has already done the testing. Whoever buys the lottery has a monopoly, stable market, steady players, and the benefit of advertising paid for by Illinois taxpayers. That’s a pretty good deal.
Since Illinois politicians are giving away their future for a one-time payoff, there will be a lot of interested buyers. Don’t be surprised if potential buyers throw a few dollars the politicians’ way. There is too much at stake to not want an inside edge.
I wish the great Chicago columnist Mike Royko had lived to see the lottery sale. It’s a story he would have loved to have written about. Not only will there be potential buyers currying favor, there will also be a ton of people who want a piece of the $10 billion dollars brought in by the sale.
Illinois politicians will feel like Scarlett O’ Hara at the big barbeque. They will be wined, dined, and courted.
Even if the lottery sale can be done on the up and up, it is still a terrible idea.
Illinois will eventually have to raise taxes or cut services to compensate for the income that was once generated by the lottery.
I worry about private industry managing a lottery. Private owners will market in ways that governments would not. The purchasing company will seek the quickest way to boost profits-- exploiting the poor.
The Illinois lottery can’t sell tickets near welfare offices. A private owner will. People will blow their family’s welfare money before they get off the block.
Before states made them legitimate, lotteries had a different name: the numbers racket.
The crime lords who ran them made an incredible amount of money, just like the states are making now.
State-run lotteries took the stigma away from the numbers racket.
You will see huge corporations looking to a buy a lottery. What will happen when these companies are managed by the same people who managed Enron?
If the corporations go broke, do lottery winners get stiffed or does the state of Illinois jump in and guarantee the payments? If so, they may need to take in more than $10 billion.
Mafia-fronted businesses are always interested in gaming. States will need to be extra careful to keep them out of the private lottery business.
The mob has their own way of ensuring profitability. The numbers racket in my hometown was run by a guy named Frank “Screw” Andrews. At some point, Screw’s business came into question. Shortly thereafter, he “accidentally” fell out of a fourth-floor window.
Selling the lottery might fund great programs if states spend the money wisely and robber barons, mobsters, and greedy corporations are kept at bay.
I would take the other side on that bet.
With billions of lottery dollars to plunder, my bet is on pirates and robber barons making a big comeback.
Section Two
Lottery Losers
Powerball Jack:
The Ultimate Lottery Loser
Jack Whittaker: Lottery Loser
Some people think money will make them happy.
That is the reason they keep buying lottery tickets.
The odds of winning are about a trillion to one.
They are looking for a quick answer to life’s problems.
Winning the lottery brings a whole new list of problems.
Take the case of Jack Whitaker, the West Virginia man who was the biggest lottery winner ever. In 2002, Whitaker took home over $100 million from the Powerball.
Usually you read about millionaires on the business page. Jack made regular appearances in another part of the paper, the police blotter.
Jack needed his own police force or possibly a private army. Bad things kept happening to him.
While he was hanging out at a strip club, someone put a drug in his drink and took $545,000 that he had in his truck.
Jack was charged with threatening a bartender and groping a waitress. An 18-year-old was found dead in his house.
I’ve spent my life helping people with large amounts of money. The people who cope do two things: they don’t take the money in a lump sum and they don’t brag about how much money they have.
I’m convinced lotteries offer payments over time only to make the jackpot look larger. The lotteries can then advertise the ultimate payout rather than the “cash option” payment that they know people are going to take.
Jack violated both of my rules. He took the “cash option” and let the whole world know that he had money.
If you get a lot of money, never tell anyone about it; you are asking for trouble if you do. Getting a lump sum gave him problems he never planned on having.
No one knows they are going to win the lottery so they don’t have plans for what to do with the winnings. Jack had two decisions and he messed up both. He should have taken the money over time and kept quiet about it.
He won the biggest jackpot but became another lottery loser.
Jack Whitaker: The Worst That Could Happen
“Maybe it’s the best thing; maybe it’s the best thing, for you. But it’s the worst that could happen to me.”
-Jimmy Webb
Some people believe winning the lottery would be best thing for them. Not Jack Whitaker. Winning the Powerball jackpot was the worst thing that could have happened to him.
Before he won the lottery, Jack did not have a bad life. He was making good money as a contractor in West Virginia, and he had been married to the same woman for forty years. He was close to his teenage granddaughter.
Jack’s life became hell after winning the lottery. He kept getting arrested for drunk driving and getting robbed in strip clubs. He and his wife divorced, and his granddaughter died of a drug overdose.
His wife wished that they had torn up the winning ticket.
Stories like Jack’s are frequent, and they can’t be good publicity for lotteries. The winners become marks for every con artist.
I wonder if the people running lotteries think about people like Jack. The lottery gets a ton of free publicity when someone wins, and lottery web pages run stories about how winners plan to give money to charity.
Lotteries skip over the part about winners blowing money on booze, strippers and drugs, even though that happens much more than winners giving money to the United Way.
A lottery web page says the average lottery player has at least a high school education and makes between $25,000 and $35,000 a year.
That particular “study” overlooked the lottery players in the stores that I go to. The people I see who play the lottery don’t seem to be well-educated, big-money types; especially when they are counting out pennies in order to buy a ticket.
If I were on a lottery board, things would definitely change.
Since I have written several columns bashing the lottery, I doubt I’ll see my name on the list of gubernatorial appointments.
In fact, I have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting appointed to run it.
The lottery board should be working on ways to protect winners from becoming losers, like what happened to Jack.
The board could do two things that would make life better: they could eliminate the cash option, and they could refuse to release the names of the winners.
The lottery board engages in false advertising, claiming that the lottery jackpot is $100 million when the cash option payout is only half of that. The people in charge of the lottery know that almost everyone takes the cash option.
By eliminating the cash option, people would then have a chance to get adjusted to living with big money. If they ran through all their money in a year, they would have another opportunity to handle it better the next year and the years after that.
People are used to receiving money in weekly or monthly payments. To give them a lump sum with no preparation invites disaster.
The lottery board gets great press when they publicize the winner and present them with a big check. Unfortunately, things aren’t so great for the person holding the check.
I work with many injured people, and most of the settlements are confidential. Sometimes word gets out, and it is horrible to see what it does to families and friendships. Every person with a sad story suddenly feels like their injured friend owes them some of their money.
Some people can’t resist being on television. One need only look to Jerry Springer or reality shows to find proof of this. However, the lottery should warn winners of what they are getting into when they choose to release their names to the public.
You would think that the lottery board would want to push some reforms just to make it look better. If all lottery winners come off looking as bad as Jack, other people will be less likely to want to play the game.
Maybe Jack would have been ruined even if safeguards had been in place. He turned into a first-class jerk.
Yet still, even jerks don’t deserve to see their granddaughter die.
That is the worst that could happen.
Curse of the Lottery
“I can just see me on a tropical
island,
Riding the surf and drinking coconut wine,
Chasing the
sun through an innocent land’
Leaving the straight life behind.”
-Bobby Goldsboro
The E! Entertainment television network aired a show called Curse of the Lottery. It featured lottery winners who turned into lottery losers like Jack Whitaker.
I don’t play the lottery and encourage everyone to do the same, but I know many people do it anyway. That reality is reinforced every time I stop in a convenience store. I would like stores with lottery lines and non-lottery lines.
I wonder if I would be the only person in the non-lottery category.
I feel sorry for the people who hang around stores blowing their money on lottery tickets; especially those who play scratch-off games. There is an allure to scratch-off games that totally escapes me.
I can see spending a buck on the chance to win $300 million. I don’t understand spending that same buck on a scratch-off game. I have watched a lot of people win a few dollars with scratch-offs and then turn around and buy more until they blow it all.
Scratch-off games are not a form of gambling; they are a form of boredom killing.
Many lottery players are like the man in the Bobby Goldsboro song. They want to escape from where they are. It is the same reason that people do drugs, drink, and have other issues. They are looking for a way out of their current lives.
They hope the lottery will solve their problems. They think things will be better on a tropical island.
If tropical islands were perfect, everyone would live there. Professional beachcombing may not be all it is made out to be.
Unlike the insinuation of the E! Entertainment television show, winning the lottery is not like the curse of King Tut’s tomb. The problem is that people do not handle the change in lifestyle well.
Many lottery players are people who already have issues. They want to be rid of problems and hope that the lottery is the answer. Although it doesn’t happen often, one of those unhappy people sometimes win.
Once they win, they expect their problems to be gone. They won’t be. Money will cause those problems to multiply.
Most people have boundaries, and money is one of the biggest. People don’t take fifty of their closest “friends” to Las Vegas because they can’t afford to.
Lottery winners can suddenly afford to do stupid things and they do so until the money runs out. The friends go at about the same time the money does.
Jack Whittaker is a classic example of where money met bad habits. Blowing thousands in strip clubs, indulging his granddaughter, and his generally obnoxious behavior could not have happened without unlimited money.
It was not a curse. It was a guy with no control. The money did not create Jack’s bad habits; it let him practice them without boundaries.
If Jack had spent some money on some good psychological help, he might have kept more money and had a better quality of life. It certainly couldn’t have hurt. His “strip club and casino therapy” was expensive and did not pay off.
I have heard that 90% of people who win the lottery run through the money in five years. A lot of people are doing things wrong.
They don’t look at the winnings as a chance to provide security, give back to the world, or take care of their family.
They look at the money as a way to leave the straight life behind.
As long as they see money as a way to fix their other problems, they are never going to have it long.
That is not a curse; it is just the way the world works.
Virginia Merida: Get Rich or Die Trying
“Get Rich or Die Trying”
-50 Cent
When Lottery winner Virginia Merida died in Newport, Ky., It was days before anyone found her. Five years after hitting a big jackpot, she died by herself at age 51.
A large lump sum overwhelms most people. They make mistakes and let people take advantage of them.
Some people use the example of lottery winner’s wasted lives to say that money is bad.
Money isn’t evil. Even quick money is not evil. Money allows us to feed our families and to live a high quality life. It is the exchange system we use to translate work product into rewards.
Get rich or die is not a motto to many people, it is a lifestyle. Like sex, drugs or rock and roll, money can become an obsession.
It is said that money is the root of all evil. A television minister named Reverend Ike said the lack of money is the root of all evil.
Lack of respect for money is really the root of all evil.
People that set financial limits and goals live happily. Those that don’t are unhappy, lonely, or make fools out of themselves.
The unhappy people did not have respect for the money. Money is like fire or a dangerous substance. You have to understand that it can do both good and harm.
If you go into a strip joint with $545,000 in cash, you don’t have respect for the money.
Most people have friends within 15% of their own income class. When someone wealthy has friends who are poor, it is hard for them to do the same things socially.
Some big spenders think that money can buy them love, friends or happiness.
What kind of person would want “love” from someone who wants them only for their money?
It would be a lot cheaper and productive to dump the “friend” and spend the money on a good therapist.
I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who had a chance to do it right and screwed up. They should have gotten some good advisers and restricted the money in ways that keep themselves under control.
I get angry about those who leech off injured people. I wish there was a way to put them in jail or bury them under the jail.
There is not a law against being stupid. When a 60-year-old lottery winner suddenly gets an 18-year-old lover, the lover is not with them for their looks.
I really don’t understand the inner mind of people who leech.
How much self-respect can someone like that have? I wonder how people get up in the morning, knowing they are going to suck money from someone else.
People who earn money learn to respect its power. You don’t see many self-made millionaires doing the stupid things that lottery winners are known for.
Go to a self-made person and see if they are paying people to be their friends; it does not happen. The self-made person has sweat and stress invested in creating that money.
The money has earned its proper respect.
I’m not sure what killed Virginia Merida but her lottery induced lifestyle did not help. She lost respect for her money and for herself.
She managed to be rich and die trying.
David Edwards: Another Lottery Loser
“The world’s original hard luck story and a hard time losing man.”
-Jim Croce
In light of increasing media cost consciousness, news outlets can save money by pre-arranging a “fill in the blanks” news story.
It would say:
Powerball winner ______________ is in trouble with the law again. This is the _____ time the jackpot recipient has been arrested.
There are reports that he/she has spent all of their money in _____ years. There have been ______ lawsuits filed against him/her and family members in the past year.
The media should have the story ready. They are going to use it over and over again.
A chance to “fill in the blanks” came from Powerball winner David Edwards, who hails from Ashland, Kentucky.
Ken Hart at the Ashland Independent newspaper has written a number of articles about Edwards and his wife Shawna.
Edwards won a $41 million Powerball and took home $27 million in August, 2001. Six years later, the money was apparently gone.
Edwards was evicted from his $1.2 million home in Palm Beach Garden, Florida for not paying his association dues. Shortly thereafter, Edwards was evicted from a storage unit that he was apparently living in. The items in storage were auctioned to pay Edwards’ storage fees.
His wife was arrested for not paying $17,000 in back child support. She was released and then arrested again; she missed a court date and failed a drug test.
You would think someone who won the lottery would get it right.
About a week after Edwards won the lottery, I watched him on television and predicted that he would run through all the money. He had every red flag for disaster. An out-of-work ex-con, Edwards immediately acquired an entourage and went on a buying spree. He was all over the media, and I remember him saying that he was going to meet with financial advisors.
If I had been Edwards’ financial advisor, I would not put it on my resume.
I’m not sure that even the best advisor could have kept Edwards from running through the money. However, there would have been several options to try. Before Edwards started spending like a drunken sailor, an advisor could have placed some of the money into a trust and some into annuities that would have paid over Edwards’ lifetime.
It did not happen, and Edwards became another “shake your head” kind of story.
Receiving a life-changing amount of money is not a curse as long as the receiver takes steps to keep him or herself under control.
Most people have built-in controls on their finances. They work for a paycheck and pay their bills. They have a budget based on a steady amount of money coming in.
When people get “sudden money” from an inheritance, lottery or other source, they often do not know how to handle it.
It makes them easy prey to family and friends wanting a “loan” and prey to the temptation to spend on unnecessary items.
There is a whole economy built around people who let money run through their fingers.
I have noted a ton of advertisements aimed at “helping” people spend their tax refunds. A tax refund is not manna from heaven. A refund means that the government took more money out of a person’s paycheck than needed. People should be saving that money for a rainy day instead of blowing it on a trip to Las Vegas.
If people can’t handle a tax refund, imagine what they would do with $27 million.
It is actually easier to handle a large amount of money than to manage a small amount. With large amounts of money, there is a point where all your immediate needs can be met. You can buy a nice house and car and not have any debts. You can go anywhere you want and do what you want.
After that, everything else is just showing off.
It is the showing-off part that gets lottery winners into trouble.
The less flash they have with their money, the less likely they are to be part of a "fill in the blanks" media story.
Edwards is another lottery hard luck story and a hard time losing man.
The Lost Lottery Ticket
A few years ago, a woman in Cleveland filed a police report claiming that she had lost a $162 million lottery ticket. Although she had had an extensive police record, some people gave her story credence—until the real winner came forward.
The woman tried to divert attempts at justice by saying that she lied in order to help her children as well as unemployed Cleveland police officers.
Her explanation had some holes in it.
Her children did not have special needs or have higher expenses than other children.
I would think that she could get the children some school clothes, McDonalds Happy Meals and a couple of Dora the Explorer videos for less than $162 million.
Since Cleveland policemen have handcuffed her and hauled her away in the past, I am not sure why she wanted to split her winnings with them. It could be that she hoped to get some special treatment the next time she was arrested.
She might have been looking for police protection from the throngs of people who believed her story and started searching her neighborhood in order to find the missing ticket.
Most of my clients are people who have been horribly injured. The money they receive is to compensate for a hell that most of us cannot imagine. They deserve every dime they get.
Even though these people have medical needs, they often attract a host of family, “friends” and strangers who want to “handle” their money. These parasites convince themselves that they deserve the money more than the injured person.
A friend of mine has a picture of himself with a president of the United States. He shows the picture and says that the president has the second toughest job in America. Then he will show you a picture of the mother of a brain-damaged baby, and tell you that the woman is the one who has the toughest job in America.
He is absolutely right.
You might think that only the most evil of people would attempt to take money from a brain-damaged baby, but I see it done on a regular basis.
Just like the woman in Cleveland, these leeches reason that their “management” of the money will contribute to the greater good, and that it doesn’t matter how dishonest they have to be to acquire it.
Many innocent people believe these self-serving lies.
Since the woman in Cleveland was quickly discovered, the only people hurt by her lies were those she duped into searching for her “lost” ticket.
When an injured child’s money is taken away, it can never be given back.
In short, the world has some people who will take any amount of money they can, from any victim they can target.
When they attempt it, they should have as little luck as the fake lottery winner in Cleveland did.
Section Three
Bookmakers and Other Gamblers
Why is Sports Betting off the Table?
“Every gambler knows the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.”
-“The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers.
I regret that we did not have someone sing “The Gambler” at my father’s funeral. Dad started working in a bookmaking operation when he was only 15 years old and gambled until the day he died. He was good at what he did.
During my father’s era, almost all gambling took place behind closed doors. State lotteries did not exist, and casinos were only found in Las Vegas. The popular forms of gambling were sports betting, horse racing and card games.
Bookmakers like Dad were small business entrepreneurs. Though they could not advertise or sue non-paying clients, they still made a good living. Gambling allowed my parents to move from an extremely poor neighborhood to a nice one; it put food on our family’s table.
Although 48 states now allow some form of legalized gambling, only Nevada has legalized sports betting services. In most of America, lotteries, slot machines and casino games are still the only forms of gambling that are state-sanctioned. As someone who has been around gambling for most of their life, this trend is disturbing to me for a couple of reasons.
Lotteries and slot machines are terrible bets, and only large corporations can own a casino. Talented people can work for a casino, but there is no chance for those people to ever own one.
Instead of starting lotteries and attempting to lure big casinos, states should license small gambling operations like the one my father had.
For a while, sports betting dollars were flowing to online betting parlors based in other countries, but Congress, led by Senator Bill Frist, shut down that big loophole.
I was in favor of shutting down the online betting parlors. Government entities in the United States were not able to tax winnings or regulate them.
Betting parlors, regulated and taxed by individual states, would be successful.
Dad was able to make money in the days before ESPN and the explosion of televised sports. Millions of people now participate in college basketball office pools, and there are newer sports, like NASCAR, keeping bookmakers busy. Thousands of people bet with illegal bookmakers every week, and the states should be taxing that money to provide better schools and services.
Sports gambling is a fair bet. In a football game, one team is going to win and the other will lose. It is not a trillion-to-one bet like the lottery.
Furthermore, I don’t like having a state’s tax revenues tied to the few big corporations that own casinos. If the corporate executives were to commit stupid or illegal acts, like those who ran Enron did, then the state could be dragged down with them. Licensing a variety of smaller companies would give states a wider tax base.
As noted, 48 states already license and regulate some form of gambling. If they expand their regulatory reach to sports betting and allowed it to to operate officially, innovators would have more leeway to create opportunities for wealth in their communities.
As a betting man, my proposal is a long shot. No one is pushing sports betting, while the casino and slot machine companies are spending huge amounts of money on lobbyists and political donations. Even though illegal bookmaking is widespread, colleges and professional teams would fight against the legalization of sports betting. Also, there are people who legitimately oppose gambling for moral or religious reasons.
I am opposed to the lottery because it exploits poor people.
The 37 states that have lotteries seem to ignore the fact that lotteries target their poorer citizens. Sports betting and poker rooms are better alternatives because they are fair to both the state and the gambler.
My Dad ran a fair and honest operation where people got paid on time and were cut off before they got too deep in the red. His career caused him to break the law, but he was one of the most honorable men I have ever known. Dad detested gamblers that preyed on people who could not afford to lose and hated lottery games that targeted poorer people.
Before states rush off to embrace casinos and slot machines, they should allow small businesses to operate sports betting parlors and poker rooms.
As Kenny Rogers said, “The secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” Sports betting is the ace that states should keep.
The Comeback of Illegal Bookmaking
“But I got to ramble,
rambling man
Oh I got to gamble, gambling man.”
-The Bob Seger System
My father was involved in many forms of gambling, and bookmaking was one of them.
Bookmaking was illegal. Dad had a number of cover operations - such as bars, restaurants, pool halls, and grocery stores, which fronted his activities.
He had a dry cleaner with no dry-cleaning equipment. Just a cash register and a garment rack. When someone brought in clothes, dad had to take them to a real dry cleaner.
The dry cleaner was not profitable, but the backroom was.
With the rise of the Internet, backrooms started to fade away. Online bookmaking became a billion-dollar online business. Fidelity and Merrill Lynch became big stockholders in online bookies. They operated offshore but marketed to gamblers in the USA.
Bookmaking is still illegal, but the law became a joke to everyone except Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He pushed legislation to shut down online bookies.
I have been a frequent critic of Frist - a big stockholder in Hospital Corporation of America. On this issue, Bill and I agree.
Online bookies need to go away. They lure college students and others into trouble. Online bookmakers acted legitimate. They weren’t. They violated the law.
Frist used his legislative skill to get the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act through the Senate. The new law makes it illegal for Americans and their financial institutions to transfer money to online bookmakers.
Now that Internet gambling is out, where do all those bettors go? Many people enjoy gambling, and online bookmakers introduced new people to the concept.
Backroom bookies will come back.
Frist and I opposed Internet gambling for different reasons. He fought it on moral grounds, and I fought it for economic reasons.
I wanted online bookies stopped because they were unregulated, they took money out of the United States, and they caused people to run up millions of dollars in credit card debt.
Gambling is a dumb financial move, but I don’t care if people gamble within their means.
With the new law, bettors’ only options will be the corner bookies or Nevada.
Unlike the offshore operations, backroom bookies don’t take American Express cards.
Given a choice, I would rather have local bookmakers than offshore operations. Local bookies know their customers and can cut credit off before people get in over their heads. Many local bookmakers are people of integrity like my dad.
Since his operation was illegal, dad’s clients couldn’t sue. They had to count on his word that they would collect their money.
Frist and others in Congress did not realize that when they shut down the offshore bookmakers, they did not actually stop betting. They just moved it into the backroom again; which begs the question: why not make it legal?
Governments can tax the bookmakers and take a percentage of the winnings. Law-enforcement dollars can be spent on catching murderers and criminals.
It is hard to take a moral high-ground against bookmaking when most states have lotteries, casinos or slot machines. Lotteries and slots are the worst bets imaginable, and the players are usually poor people.
Sports betting is a test of skill. It boosts television ratings. No one in Kentucky is going to watch Montana play Ogden State unless they have a bet on the game.
Bob Seger was right. There are people who have to gamble.
I would rather it be legal instead of operating out of fake dry cleaners.
Cecil Fielder: The Sins of the Father
“I know that I have to go away. I have to go.”
-“Father and Son” by Cat Stevens
Even though angst between father and son can be traced to the beginning of time, I thought it was strange when baseball star Prince Fielder showed animosity towards his father, Cecil, also a former star.
The book on Cecil was that he was a well-rounded family man.
Then I read published reports which stated that Cecil ran through the $47 million that he made as a baseball player.
According to an article in the Detroit News, Cecil lost a ton of money at the casinos and never told his family. Nothing seemed amiss until the foreclosure people showed up. Cecil and his wife then had a bitter divorce.
Sports Illustrated said that Cecil allegedly helped himself to $200,000 of his son Prince’s signing bonus. Prince was served by a lawsuit process server seeking Cecil during a baseball game.
You can see why Prince is somewhat hostile.
Money woes caused the destruction of the Fielder family, just as it has for many families. Money is a leading cause of divorce. Cecil’s hidden gambling spawned a lack of trust.
Although gambling was a huge part of the problem, Cecil also lost money making bad business decisions; that is really sad.
When you have $47 million, you don’t need to make ANY business decisions. You just need to hang on to your money. You can invest it conservatively and live the life you want.
The smart thing for Fielder to do would have been to (have) set some financial goals that would have gotten a decent return with little risk.
If Cecil had put the money in treasury bonds paying 5%, the interest would have been over $2.3 million a year.
Some people can live on $2.3 million a year; I probably can.
There was no need for Cecil to take business risks; he did anyway.
Cecil went into businesses like classic cars, real estate and limousine service.
Most successful business owners start from the ground up and know their industries intimately. Baseball has no correlation to any of the businesses Fielder was in. Umpires don’t whisper hot real estate tips in your ear.
Now Cecil has nothing, and his bad decisions helped destroy his family.
Watching the Fielder family feud is painful. Baseball is a sport that worships father-son combinations. If Cecil could have kept it together, he would be a hero to a new generation.
I don’t know the whole story. Cecil blames his ex-wife for the family rift and claims she was a wild spender. He might be right, but I would have liked to have seen how the family would have held up if Cecil had stuck his money in the bank.
You used to hear frequent stories of athletes going broke. It doesn’t happen as often now. In recent years, specialized firms have started handling players’ money, and many have done a good job.
Also, baseball players make more money than they used to. I remember when Pete Rose’s goal was to someday make $100,000. Now the bat boy probably makes that.
Few people get the opportunity to make really big money, and professional athletes have short careers. Businesspeople can go broke and start over, but Cecil is not going to get another chance to hit home runs.
It doesn’t sound like Cecil has learned his lesson. He told Sports Illustrated that he is going to hit the big time with a broadband network. He and Evander Holyfield are partners. I’d feel better about Cecil’s chances if his partner were a broadband wiz instead of a former boxer.
Cecil is swinging for the fences in the business world and hoping for a home run.
In business, like in baseball, there are more strikeouts than home runs. Like playing baseball, business is not as easy as it looks.
I really liked Cecil Fielder as a player and hope he gets his life together. Until he does, I can see why Prince is following Cat Stevens’ advice.
Prince knows he has to go away and not make the mistakes his dad made.
Showing Gamblers the Way
“I want you to show me the way.”
-Peter Frampton
My late father was a bookie and a professional gambler.
If dad had gone into a different line of work, banking would have been a natural choice. Dad was a master at deciding how much credit bettors could have. He made sure that gamblers did not get in over their heads.
Big casinos have more expertise in credit than my dad, but choose not to use it.
People used to ask me how my dad collected from unwilling bettors. He could not sue them. He could only hope that they would honor their obligations, and they did.
When you see celebrities like Pete Rose or former professional quarterback Art Schlichter get into trouble, it is usually because they didn’t pay their bookmakers. Rose and Schlichter did not pay their debts, but the bookmakers let them get in over their heads.
Out of control bettors should take responsibility for their actions, but some blame has to be placed on bookmakers who let them bet more than they can pay back.
It all comes back to knowing your customer.
Certain aspects of the world of stocks and bonds remind me of gambling. You can lose more in options trading than you can in a casino.
The Securities & Exchange Commission and stock market regulators developed a “know your customer” rule that brokerage firms must follow. If a stockbroker steers someone needing a safe investment into risky option trades, the securities firm can get zapped.
Casinos need to operate under the same rules with the same liability.