In 1999, Tanda Dickerson was working as a waitress at a Waffle House in Mobile, Alabama. She had a regular customer named Edward Seward who would tip her and the other waitresses lottery tickets instead of cash. This was a big deal since the lottery was illegal in Alabama at the time.
One day, Edward gave Tanda a ticket and told her to hold onto it for the next day’s drawing. When Tanda checked the numbers, she had won a $10 million jackpot! Tanda and her family set up an LLC called “9 Mil” to collect the winnings and split them between themselves to avoid gift taxes.
However, Tanda’s coworkers claimed they had a verbal agreement to split any lottery winnings evenly between all the staff. Four of them took Tanda to court demanding their share of the $10 million. During the trial, Tanda’s lawyer infamously called her coworkers “rats coming out of the woodwork.” After just 45 minutes of deliberation, the jury ruled in favor of the coworkers.
Tanda hired a new lawyer and appealed the verdict. Her lawyer argued the verbal agreement was invalid since the lottery itself was illegal in Alabama. The appeal was successful, allowing Tanda to keep the full jackpot. But the stress of the court battles caused Tanda to split up with her husband shortly after.
Next, the IRS came after Tanda saying she owed $2 million in back taxes for gifting money to her family. After another lengthy legal fight, the IRS prevailed in court as they tend to do. Between the lawyers and back taxes, Tanda’s winnings were quickly dwindling.
She took a job as a poker dealer at a Biloxi, Mississippi casino to earn extra income. But her lottery misfortunes didn’t end there. One day, Tanda was kidnapped by her ex-husband from before her lottery-winning marriage. He took her out on a boat into the swamps, threatening to kill her for not sharing the winnings.
Tanda cleverly convinced him to let her answer a call from work, pretending they would get suspicious if she didn’t pick up. When she reached in her purse, instead of grabbing her phone, she pulled out a gun. She shot him in self-defense, and he fell into the swamp but ended up surviving.
While Tanda avoided criminal charges for the shooting, the lottery win absolutely ruined her life. The money brought nothing but legal headaches and enemies coming after her. Today, not much is known about Tanda’s current whereabouts or financial situation. But her story serves as a cautionary tale that winning the lottery isn’t always the dream come true it’s made out to be.
Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning and laughing a lot while you do, you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!
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