On Christmas Day 2002 a West Virginia man won $315 million. A few years later he said he wished he had torn up the ticket. He was 55, a contractor who had built his own company and was already worth more than $17 million. On Christmas Eve 2002 he stopped at a store in Hurricane, West Virginia, and bought a Powerball ticket. The next night it hit. $314.9 million, at the time the biggest jackpot ever won on a single ticket in America. He took the cash. About $113 million after taxes. At first he did what a good man would do. He pledged 10% to churches. He put $14 million into a foundation. He bought the deli manager who sold him the ticket a house, a Jeep and a check for $44,000. Then the money started pulling in the wrong people. In 2003 thieves took $545,000 in cash from his car outside a strip club. Asked why he carried that much, he said: “Because I can.” His granddaughter Brandi was the light of his life. He gave her about $2,000 a week. At 17 she had four cars. New friends came. Then drugs. Her boyfriend was found dead of an overdose in one of her grandfather’s houses. A few months later Brandi disappeared. On December 20, 2004, she was found dead, wrapped in a plastic sheet behind a junked van. “My granddaughter’s dead probably because of the money,” he said. His wife said she wished she had torn up the ticket. He said he wished the same. His daughter died in 2009. His house burned down in 2016. He died in 2020. “I don’t like what I’ve become,” he said. His name was Jack Whittaker. Would you still take the $315 million? Yes or no.

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