Lottery Winners Forced To Close Shop Business After Abuse From Customers

Lottery winner, Adrian Bayford and wife Gillian have been forced to close the business they owned for years after being subjected to abusive demands for money from walk-in customers.

After the couple scooped a £148 million ($240.54 million) jackpot on the Euromillions jackpot last August, Bayford, 41, and his Gillian, 40, had vowed to keep their music shop open.

But that was before they were bombarded by abusive attention, NewsHour24 reports.

The English countryside residents — the couple live in Suffolk, a county in the south-east of the UK — went back to work in the music shop just two weeks after their massive win.

According to The Telegraph, friends of the couple and other shop-owners in the high street said the Bayfords were targeted by strangers demanding money in a threatening and abusive manner.

The owner of a nearby business said:

“Adrian was getting a lot of grief from people walking in and trying to get cash off him. There are idiots in every town and some of them got nasty when he turned them away. He just does not need that kind of abuse.”

The fed-up couple held a closing sale sale just before Christmas and off-loaded their stock at minimal prices, charging just £10 ($16.25) for any 20 second hand music CDs or film DVDs.

Their shop, called the Suffolk Music Centre, finally closed its doors at the end of last month. Now nothing remains of the guitars and musical instruments that once hung from the shelves.

Bayford, a father of two, and a former postal worker, started selling second-hand CDs from a market stall about 17 years ago before he and his wife made the move to a shop premises.

The couple have been fairly modest since winning the lottery. On the night they won the jackpot, they celebrated with a round of Domino pizza for the family. This was followed by a short holiday to Scotland to see Gillian’s family. They flew with easyJet.

However, now that they are free of the shop — and the abuse that came with it — that could all change.

The couple recently splashed out on a £6 million ( $9.75 million) on a mansion and country estate in East Anglia, also in the south-east of England, said The Telegraph.

Unlike the advice on this “What To Do After You Win The Lottery” website, which places ‘Don’t Quit Your Job Just Yet’ as second on their list, the site owners probably didn’t factor in abusive customers.

If you won the lottery would you give up your day job straight away, or would you attempt to remain ‘normal’ for as long as possible like this couple?