The woman won the £7million lottery ticket after a customer at the Waffle House restaurant where she worked handed her the ticket as a tip. However, misfortune came to her.
Tonda Dickerson who won a £7million jackpot says that her life was ruined by people trying to get their hands on her winnings.
While waiting tables at a Waffle House restaurant in Grand Bay, Alabama, the woman was handed the multi-million-pound ticket as a tip. However, she has spent huge chunks of it to protect her cash ever since she won the prize in 1999.
Tonda decided to take a £275k payment each year for 30 years rather than the lump sum. After that, she quit Waffle House and started to plan a new life with this amount of money.
However, her colleagues had other ideas and she was accused of breaking a verbal contract that she would split any of the winnings with them.
Within a month of securing the life-changing sum, the woman was forking out expensive legal costs to protect her winnings.
Witnesses at the restaurant said they heard Tonda making the promise to her co-workers.
Local news site Al.com reported that in less than one hour the court had ruled against her,
The court offered her to keep $3million but she rejected. Instead, she began funnelling her winnings into a family business.
But another stroke of luck came when the Court overturned her previous conviction on the basis of her promise being a form of illegal thing.
Then misfortune continued to come to her when the customer Mr Seward giving her the ticket, claimed she swore he could have a new truck if she won. Luckily, again her lawyers argued Tonda’s offer was not legally binding and it should be viewed as a “throwaway” comment.
The unlucky woman even became the victim of evil when her ex-husband held her against her will to ask for money using weapon. To protect herself, the woman shot him through the chest. Fortunately, according to AL.com, no-one faced law-related consequences after the incident.
Some time later Tonda was chased to pay $1million in “gift taxes” paired with a sizeable income tax bill.
In 2012, she was spared paying a far larger bill when she was ruled she had to pay just a percentage of the “gift portion” – amounting to $1,119,347.90, Forbes reported
It is said that Tonda is still working after passing the majority of her winnings on to her family. Her social media pages say she currently works as a waitress in Mississippi.
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/how-waitress-tipped-7million-lottery-25249059
