Lottery loser plans online gambling venture
News on 10 Aug 2010
News on 10 Aug 2010
The 27-year-old UK man who has become notorious as the ‘lottery loser’ by blowing through a GBP 9.7 million lotto win in eight years, has told friends that he plans to recoup his fortunes by investing in a friend’s online gambling site.
This week former bin man Michael Carroll hit the Daily Mail headlines again when he sold his badly trashed 5 bedroomed home The Grange to a travel agent for GBP 142 000, taking a GBP 600 000 loss on his initial post-lotto purchase price and over GBP400 000 spent on improvements.
Carroll’s ex-wife will get half the cash from the sale and after paying estate agents and solicitors, he will be left with just GBP 63 000.
The Daily Mail reports that the mansion is currently derelict, with windows broken, junk in the garden and the interior wrecked and defaced.
If the house, in Swaffham, Norfolk, had been well maintained, Carroll could have realised up to GBP 700 000 from its sale, local estate agents estimate.
One of Carroll’s friends revealed that the failed lotto winner is back on the dole, but has plans to recoup his fortunes by investing in another friend’s online gambling website.
“He’s going to put some of the money [from the sale of the house] into an internet business run by a mate,” the friend told the Daily Mail. “It’s an online gambling site for horse racing, but is different because it only takes bets on donkeys. If it works he’ll get a good return. It’s not like a normal bookies – it only takes bets on horses which have got no chance of winning.”
The newspaper reports that Carroll has ‘frittered away his fortune on women, alcohol and drugs’, but now plans to invest what money he has left in the internet gambling venture, a car for his current girlfriend and a holiday in Spain with his 18-month-old daughter.
In a masterly understatement, the friend opined: “The thing is he’s never been very good with money. He’d invest in something then take it straight out because he needs quick cash. He’s learned and knows this is his last chance and once he’s got through it there’s nothing left.”
