Michael Carroll, the so-called lottery lout, is one of the faces that always pops up in story roundups about lottery winners who threw it all away. He lost the $14.4 million he won in a British lottery in 2002 at age 19 some time ago.
Now an interview published Sunday in the Daily Record revealed that Michael Carroll has moved to Scotland, where he works in a cookie factory for a pathetic $9 an hour — a bit more than $300 a week.
He actually gets paid in British pounds, not US dollars, but I’ve done the conversion for you to give you a better idea of just how far he’s fallen.
Ouch.
According to multiple media sources, including a Tru TV report called “The Lottery is Cursed,” Carroll threw it all away on an extended spree of degenerate excess that included drugs, gambling, and hookers.
From the look of him at the time, he may have overly invested in bad tattoos, gold chains , and alcohol as well.
Be that as it may, his wife left him, taking their daughter with her.
A 2010 report from the Daily Mail carried photographs of the five-bedroom mansion that lost $900,000 in value after Carroll trashed the place with years of wild partying.
Eventually Michael Carroll lost every penny of the lottery money and was forced to declare bankruptcy.
In the new report, he said he ran to Scotland to change his life and also to get closer to his daughter, who is now 10. Carroll claimed that he slept in a tent in the woods for a week after he arrived.
And now the one-time lottery winner said he treasured his new job working for peanuts in the Walkers shortbread cookie factory:
“I’ve always respected the pound but I treasure my weekly pay on a Friday more than any lottery fortune. I’m just so happy to get a wage packet again.
“I’m definitely happier because I’m back to reality again. A few people recognized me when I started…I had lots of questions about the money in the first few days and where it all went.
“I just said I was a 19-year-old d***head who went nuts.”
He started the cookie gig in May, so it may be too soon to know how long his new life lasts.
A British director called Keith Allen made a documentary about Michael Carroll when he still had his lottery money. Here’s an excerpt:
Allen noted that he revised his opinion somewhat of the man as he went along and experienced some of the difficulties that come with winning large sums of cash.
Maybe but no. Not really.
I didn’t win any $14 million in my gambling days but I won enough to figure out it’s too hard to get that money to just throw it away.
What do you folks think? Would you end up working in a cookie factory like Michael Carroll after lottery winnings of over $14 million?
[image by jokerpro via Shutterstock ]