News writer; Opinion columnist
One of the biggest problems most lottery winners face after claiming a major jackpot is people trying to scam them out of their winnings. Sometimes, these crimes are committed by a trusted financial advisor, such as lottery lawyer Jason Kurland, who stole millions from the winners he represented.
Other times, we've seen close friends and family members commit everything from fraud to murder to get their hands on a winner's millions.
However, one of the scariest ways that people will try to take a jackpot is kidnapping for ransom. These are true stories of lottery winners who were ripped out of their homes by criminals desperate to get their hands on a million-dollar prize.
A simple man
In September of 2020, a Brazilian bank manager received an unusual phone call. Jonas Lucas Alves Dias, an account holder at the bank, requested to make a cash transfer of 3 million reais (approximately $600,000). The manager refused the request because the sum was so large and told Dias that he would have to come into the bank personally in order to make the transfer.
That may have been the last phone call Alves Dias ever made. Just hours later, he was discovered severely injured by police on a highway outside of Hortolândia, a city in the state of São Paulo. He was rushed to a hospital for treatment, but he passed away from his injuries two days later.
Alves Dias' tragic ending began with what should have been the greatest day in his life. Shortly before his death, he won the Mega-Sena lottery and received a prize of 47 million reais (approximately $9 million).
His friends say that Alves Dias was humble about his winnings, and he didn't radically change his life despite his fortune. He remained in the same home that he shared with his sister and brother, without adding any security, and was often seen walking around the neighborhood in his flip-flops.
He only enjoyed a few extravagances, including buying a small farm outside of the city, purchasing a truck for a friend and paying medical expenses for another friend.
According to police reports, Alves Dias went for a walk near his home on September 13, 2022, and wasn't seen again until police found his body twenty hours later. An investigation revealed that he was kidnapped by a gang of five people who tortured him to force him to transfer the funds, and murdered him when he couldn't get them the money they demanded.
For their troubles, the kidnappers were only able to withdraw about 4,000 reais (less than $1,000) from his accounts.
Ultimately, police arrested five people for his murder, including Rogério de Almeida Spínola, who participated in the torture of the victim, and Rebeca Messias Pereira Batista, who owned the bank account that received the transfer from Alves Dias' account, and Marcos Vinicyus Sales de Oliveira and Marcos Vinicius Ferreira, who were responsible for the actual kidnapping.
The Mega-Sena may be the unluckiest lottery in the world. Since 2007, at four of the games' winners have been found murdered.
Kidnap cruise
In the fraught and chaotic world of lottery winners, Tonda Dickerson might have one of the most chaotic and notorious stories of all.
Trouble started for the former Alabama Waffle House waitress and divorced single mom when Edward Seward, one of her regular customers and a long-haul truck driver, decided to tip her with a lottery ticket from the Florida Lotto in March 1999. Dickerson didn't think much of it until, to the shock of everyone involved, her ticket's numbers came up and she won $10 million.
As often happens with lottery winners, chaos ensued. First, Dickerson's fellow waitresses sued her, stating that she had promised to split the prize with them if her ticket was a winner. However, an appeals court found that promises made about gambling were legally invalid because the lottery was illegal in Alabama.
Next, Seward, who had given her the ticket, came back to get his share, claiming that Dickerson had promised him she would buy him a new truck if the ticket were a winner. Courts dismissed his case as well.
However, things truly took a turn for the worse when Dickerson's abusive ex-husband learned she had won the money. He forced her into his car and drove her deep into a remote area of Mississippi, and told her that he planned to kill her.
He brought her to a boat launch so he could bury her in the swamp, but her phone rang. He agreed to let her answer so that people wouldn't be suspicious that she was missing, but instead of grabbing the phone, she took a .22 caliber pistol out of her purse and shot him in the chest.
The bullet didn't kill him, and Dickerson actually urged him to drive himself to the hospital so he could receive treatment for his wound. He took her advice and survived, although he received a brief prison sentence for the kidnapping.
Dickerson escaped, but her troubles weren't over. In an effort to protect her money, she transferred it to her family members. However, the IRS claimed that she owed $1 million in gift taxes. As a result, she reportedly took up work as a blackjack dealer on a riverboat casino to help make ends meet.
Bad boyfriend
You don't need to win millions of dollars to be a victim of a lottery kidnapper.
When Tennessee resident Dontrell Hanes learned that his ex-girlfriend, whose name has not been released for her protection, had purchased a winning lottery ticket worth $10,000, he decided that he was entitled to her winnings.
According to police reports, Hanes went to the victim's apartment in Cordova, a suburb of Memphis, in 2022, and told her to let him in. When she refused, he kicked the door down and, in a night of horrors, attacked, beat, and kidnapped the woman, demanding that she give him the winning ticket.
Police allege that Hanes, who has a history of domestic violence, dragged his ex into the bathroom, where he choked her until she lost consciousness. When the victim refused to transfer money into his bank account, he dragged her out of the house and forced her into his blue Ford Explorer.
Hanes pulled a gun out and continued to demand that she pay him money as he drove her into the neighboring state of Mississippi. He even took the time to stop at Burger King and buy food for himself while threatening to “make something bad happen” to her if she didn't do what he said.
Knowing that the sadistic Hanes was more than capable of murdering her, she convinced him to give her her cellphone back so that she could call her daughter and reassure her that her mother was fine. However, instead of calling her family, she called the police, who were able to track her phone to an Exxon gas station.
When police arrived, they found Hanes sitting in the Explorer, smoking a blunt. When they surrounded the car and told him to step out of the vehicle, he replied, “You're going to have to kill me.”
Hanes and the deputies engaged in a vicious fist fight as they tried to remove him from the car. Eventually, backup arrived, and officers subdued him with injuries that required hospital treatment.
Following his arrest, Hanes was charged with nine felonies, including aggravated assault against a police officer, resisting arrest, aggravated assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping.
No escape
Maunds Bryant's life took a turn for the worse when he was diagnosed with ALS, an illness that would take his life in just a few years. Unfortunately, due to a big lottery win, his life ended much sooner than even his doctor expected.
Bryant's family won $420,000 in the Illinois state lottery, and Danny Smith Jr decided that he was entitled to some of the money, even though he hadn't done anything to win it.
In 2016, Smith Jr. broke into Bryant's home in Normal, Illinois, and kidnapped him and his stepfather. He brought both men to a second house in Peoria, where he demanded a $25,000 ransom from Bryant's mother.
"The woman was told someone was watching, and that's why she didn't call the police," Normal Assistant Police Chief Eric Klingele told reporters.
While waiting for his money, Bryant’s stepfather was able to escape from the house and call the police. When they searched the home, they discovered Bryant's body in the basement, where he had died from a head injury he sustained during the kidnapping.
Smith Jr was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 48 years in state prison.
Just in time
One of the most important aspects of committing a major crime is not telling anyone you plan to commit a major crime.
Fortunately for two Canadian lottery winners, the man targeting them for their wealth learned this lesson a little too late and was stopped before he could put his nefarious plan into action.
This particular scheme began when Quebec residents Zenovij Pacholuk and his wife, Dolores Coffey, won a $27 million lottery jackpot from the May 26, 2007, Lotto 6/49 drawing. The two accountants said that their only plan for using the money was to take their daughter on a dream vacation to Disney World.
This massive prize put them squarely in the sights of Edwin Mata Lima, an eighteen-year-old Mexican national, who had arrived in Montreal only four weeks earlier and read about the couple's win in the newspaper.
Lima decided that he would break into the family's home, kidnap them at gunpoint, and demand a $10 million ransom; however, he planned to murder the couple after stealing their money.
Fortunately for the winners, Lima told his friends about his plan, and one of them reported him to the police.
Investigators informed Pacholuk and Coffey about Lima's attack, and they agreed to leave their home and go into hiding. Police then tracked Lima until he attempted to purchase weapons to carry out his plot. He was arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder, extort, and kidnap the family.
Montreal police spokesman Olivier Lapointe told reporters:
We arrested him as quickly as possible when we had all the information. It's a very unusual case. We've heard of lottery winners getting harassed by people coming to the door and asking for money or donations, but nothing like this.
Comments