Article content

When he won a $5-million lottery jackpot in 2006, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation had some advice for Daniel Carley, then a small-time weed dealer in St. Catharines, Ont.

Get a financial advisor, it said. Then delist your phone number and change the locks on your home.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or ‘Lottery curse’ claims another victim with Ontario man broke and in jail after $5M win Back to video

It was general advice, offered with a smile to all big winners. But it was especially prescient in Carley’s case, in which sound judgment was not the norm. For example, he blew more than half the money in the first three years, at a rate approaching $20,000 a week. Today he is broke.

News that Carley, 35, was sentenced last week to two and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to dealing crack in association with outlaw motorcycle gangs has offered the latest example of the lottery curse, a familiar story in which a jackpot destabilizes the lives of winners, and leaves them worse off than before.

There are, for example, the tabloid celebrity “lotto louts” of England, such as Michael Carroll, who went full circle from garbage collector to lavish spender and back to garbage collector, collecting addictions and convictions along the way.