Big lottery wins may make life comfortable, but they aren’t a guarantee of a happy future and even the largest sums can’t guarantee everything in life. Today we hear about a $338,000,000 Powerball winner who has been charged with sexual assault on multiple charges, four years after striking lucky on the lottery.
Pedro Quezada 49 won the US Powerball jackpot back in 2013, netting a massive $338,000,000. Now he’s been charged with several accounts of sexual assault on a young girl, relating to a spate of alleged attacks when she was aged 11, until she was 14.
Before winning the lottery Quezada worked at a bodega in New Jersey, after coming to the US from the Dominican Republic as a teenager. At the time of the win he went public, was reported to have five children and said of the win ‘My life has to change but it will not change my heart.’ Almost immediately after winning the jackpot, Quezada was back in the news, this time for unpaid child support amounting to $29,000. That case was settled and it’s been all quiet for the lottery winner since, at least on the media front, until this alleged victim came forward.
Quezada has now been charged with two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, two counts of second-degree aggravated sexual assault, and one count of endangering the welfare of a child. If found guilt he faces a maximum term of twenty years in New Jersey State Prison, where he may find it very hard to spend his remaining millions.
Police believe the girl is Quezada’s only victim, and the case will be heard in the coming weeks.