Charles Riddle felt his fortune ruined him
Charles Riddle is perhaps considered to be the original cursed lottery winner after he won $1 million way back in 1975 in the US state of Michigan.
Riddle was soon to hit the headlines for the vast amount of bad luck that his momentary stroke of good luck would bring. It seemed that as soon as Riddle pocketed the lottery jackpot prize money, he was a doomed man.
One of the things that immediately went against Riddle was the time of his win. It was the 1970s, things were economically tight and Riddle was a 25 year old man with the world at his feet when he became an overnight millionaire. It is bad enough when winners have thrust into this new arena of the rich and famous without any prior warning but Riddle was an impressionable twenty something with very little life experience. It was a dangerous concoction.
It was only 8 years later that Riddle ended up in a US District Court on charges relating to drug abuse. This was the culmination of a prolonged period that can only be described as Riddle going off the rails. Shortly after his lottery win, Riddle divorced his wife and soon entered the immoral route of drug trafficking. His winnings were paid out in annual instalments but he was still managing to go through the winnings very quickly. However, it remained unproven as to whether Riddle’s involvement in illegal substance abuse was directly related to the money he won through the lottery.
PRISON
On 27th February, 1985, Riddle was sentenced to three years in a federal state prison after he pleaded guilty to dealing 225 grams of cocaine. It was the climax of several years of behaviour that was immoral, reckless and careless.
In a newspaper interview years after his lottery win, Riddle stated “It ruined me” when speaking about his winnings. Even though it was only $1 million, back in 1975 that would have been the equivalent of roughly $4 million in present day terms. Several other lottery winners, like the UK’s youngest lottery winner Callie Rogers, have also spoken of the detrimental affect on their life from winning.
In the years between winning the lottery and his incarceration in a federal prison, Riddle endured tough times after divorcing his wife and was forced to endure a number of high profile lawsuits.
Riddle will forever be remembered as the pioneer of the term “lucky loser” due to extraordinary manner in which his life spiralled out of control when, in theory, everything should have ended happily ever after when he landed the million dollar lottery prize.