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It should have changed his life for the better
The big win
November 16, 2006, Abraham Shakespeare and a fellow worker, Mike Ford stopped at a convenience store in Frostproof, Florida. Abraham asked Mike to pick up a lottery ticket for him in the store and handed Ford his last two dollars. What happened next should have made it the greatest day of Abraham’s life.
One of those quick picks had the winning Florida Lotto number, worth over $30 million. For the day laborer who’d been homeless in his life, the win was a stroke of unbelievable good fortune. He chose to take the lump sum of $17 million. Abraham’s luck had changed at last, or so he thought.
Abraham Shakespeare
At the time of the win, forty-something Abraham lived with his mother in Lakeland, Florida. He survived by taking odd jobs like washing dishes or sweeping floors always getting paid in cash. He was friendly, and easygoing, with no ambition and never asking much of life. As a teen, he’d done some time in a reform school. He had two sons with two different women.
Ironically, Shakespeare, despite his illustrious name, was illiterate and could neither read nor write. A school dropout, he was ill-prepared for the complexity the windfall brought to his life. He didn’t hire a lawyer or…
