5 Crazy Lotto Winner Stories

Table of contents:

• THE 9 LIVES OF FRANE SELAK
• ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES A WINNER
• LOTTO LAZARUS
• AND THE LIGHTNING STRIKES...TWICE
• LOTTO LOUT
• WHAT'S YOUR STORY?

THE 9 LIVES OF FRANE SELAK

Dubbed both the world's unluckiest and luckiest man, Frane Selak's early life sounds like the Croatian remake of Final Destination.

The unassuming music teacher's story starts in 1962, when a train he was on derailed and plunged into an icy river. Seventeen of his fellow passengers perished, but Frane escaped with just a broken arm and a nasty bout of pneumonia.

A year later, while flying from Zagreb to Rijeka, the plane's door blew open, sucking him and many other passengers out. Selak survived, landing miraculously in a haystack but nineteen others died. It was his first and last flight, not surprisingly.

Four years later a bus he was travelling in lost control and crashed into a river, killing four others. Despite a second immersion in icy water, Frane survived again.

Another four years passed before disaster struck once again, he narrowly escaped a fire that engulfed his car thanks to a faulty fuel tank. The switch from public to private transport seemingly doing him no good.

Three years later he was in another car fire, when a malfunction sent flames coursing through the air vents. He was unharmed but lost much of his hair.

In 1995 he was hit by a bus but escaped with minor injuries.

In 1996, swerving to avoid an oncoming bus, his car left the road and plunged into a gorge. Frane was launched from the car and landed safely in a tree, but his Skoda exploded 300 feet below.

At this point, it seems like fate and death had exhausted their attempts to off poor Frane, and instead decided to reward him with a long-overdue bit of good fortune, a lottery win of €900,000! Easily enough to buy him the safest car on the market.

ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES A WINNER

You’ve probably read the facts about being more likely to be struck by lightning or attacked by a shark than winning the lottery, but how about winning the lottery multiple times?

To win $1 million is already defying incredible odds but to win $1 million twice is absolutely amazing.

Terry Splawn, from Concord, North Carolina, not only won the lottery twice, winning $1 million each time, he also won a third time, winning $100,000. What makes this lotto winner story even more remarkable is that he bought all his tickets from the same lucky shop, Sam’s Mini Stop, now that’s crazy!

Splawn’s first win came in April 2017 when he won $1 million on the Millionaire Bucks Lottery, the odds of winning were 1 in 1.248 million. His second $1 million came just short of two years later, in March 2019, which he won another million on a scratchcard, the odds were 1 in 1.8 million. His latest win came on the 6^th of September 2021, which was Labor Day in the US. Mr Splawn bought a $20 Premier Cash ticket and beat odds of 1 in 3.08 million to win a cool $10,000.

Upon finding out that he had won for a third time, Splawn remarked; “it certainly is fun to win’. You could say that again!

LOTTO LAZARUS

This next lottery winner story comes from Down Under and is as much heart-warming as it is crazy.

In 1997 Billy Morgan was a truck driver living in a trailer park in Australia. During one of his road trips his vehicle was involved in a bad accident, although not seriously injured Morgan was rushed to hospital, where things took a turn for the worst. 

Reacting badly to some medication, Morgan had a massive heart attack and was clinically dead for 14 minutes, before slipping into a 12-day coma. In that time his family were advised that he would likely have lost many of his cognitive functions and turning off life support would be the best course of action.

Luckily for Billy, he woke up, fit as a fiddle no less. He changed career, got engaged and won a car on a scratchcard. This caught the attention of the local media, not because winning a car is particularly notable, but because of his dramatic change in fortune. 

As part of a cheesy local news segment, Billy was to be filmed recreating the moment he won the car, in order to relive his winning moment for the camera. I guess the plan was to start filming and then have him exclaim something along the lines of "Crikey, I've won a car."

It's at this point, cameras rolling, that Morgan goes off script, instead, he exclaims “I just won $250,000. I’m not joking!” And he wasn't, he'd picked up another winning scratchcard. 

AND THE LIGHTNING STRIKES...TWICE

We already mentioned the odds of being struck by lightning, it seems every article about lottery odds reminds us of this. But what are the odds of winning the lottery and being hit by lightning? The answer, 1.26 trillion to one. Odds that one Nova Scotia resident beat in 2015.

Peter McCathie was 14 when a bolt of lightning struck him as he was mooring a boat (it wasn't even a particularly stormy day, Peter recounts). Later in life, Peter began to play the lottery and won $1 million on the Lotto 6/49, along with his co-worker, Diana Miller, who he shared the prize with. Not only that, McCathie won a further $10,000 since he owns the shop where the duo bought the $3 ticket!

To put McCathie's incredible odds-beating achievement into perspective, here are some things that are more likely than winning the lottery and being hit by lightning:

• Being killed by a hot tap (1 in 5,000,000) 
• Becoming president of the United States (1 in 5,693,092).
• Becoming a saint (1 in 20,000,00)
• Being killed by an asteroid (1 in 74,817,414)

That's not all, Peter's daughter was also hit by lightning while working as a guide in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Unfortunately, we are unable to verify if she plays the lottery. 

LOTTO LOUT

Of all the unbelievable lotto stories, the tale of Michael Carroll, dubbed the ‘Lotto Lout’, is easily the craziest of them, not in terms of how the lotto was won, but what the winner did with the cash.

Carroll was famously wearing an electronic tag when he won £9.7 million in 2002, at the age of 19. He didn't even have a bank account. The part-time bin-man began a voyage of excess that made him a lottery legend, for all the wrong reasons.

He purchased a luxury five-bedroom property called The Grange (advertised as a family home) and threw endless drug-fuelled sex parties that would last several days. He also turned the back garden into a personal demolition derby. Before abandoning the property after the gas and electricity were cut off, the house was wrecked, and the garden was full of dozens of cars in various states of disrepair.

In his heyday, Carroll would be adorned with thousands of pounds worth of gold rings, watches and necklaces. In total, he claimed to own £100,000 worth of jewellery before it was stolen. The next day he went out and rebought it all. “I only started to think about three things – drugs, sex and gold”, he later confessed.

He was arrested several times for a variety of crimes, most notably firing steel balls from the back of his Mercedes van (emblazoned with his "The King of Chavs" moniker), breaking 32 car and shop windows.

By 2013 Carroll had blown all his money and ended up homeless for three months, describing the experience as ‘easy come easy go’. He then went on to work at a Walkers biscuit factory in Aberlour, Scotland, before starting at a slaughterhouse. His latest job is that of a coal delivery man in a remote part of Moray, Scotland.

Carroll maintains that he doesn’t regret how he spent his winnings as it was ‘the best 10 years of (his) life for a pound’ and that now he lives a “free” and “happier” lifestyle as opposed to being a junkie and an alcoholic who had run-ins with gangsters that were after his cash. “I’m happy. I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore, no one’s going to hit me over the back of the head and rob me” he claims. It seems Carroll is genuinely happy just to be alive and living a quiet life; “I reckon I’m lucky to be alive. If I still had the money, I’d probably be six feet under.”.

WHAT WILL YOUR STORY BE?

There are other crazy lottery stories out there but the ones we have mentioned are definitely some of the craziest turns of events involving the lottery. There are a few things that we can take away from all this. We should be aware that incredibly unlikely things do happen so we must never say never and not despair when things are not going our way. Life is full of ups and downs. If you do win the lottery, it would be a waste not to enjoy yourself, but it is important not to be reckless unless you don’t mind heaving coal for a living.

What would you do if you won the lottery? Would you spend like there’s no tomorrow, invest wisely or maybe a bit of both?

You can bet on the EuroMillions with Millionaire on Lottoland for your chance to win. Will yours be the next crazy lotto winner story?

Last Updated: September 2021