The High Cost of Winning（在线收听）

The High Cost of Winning

People Weekly © 2004

Time Inc. All rights reserved

1

Jay Sommers, 36, Won: $5.8 million, Outcome: Lost it all, delivered pizza

Jay Sommers was 20 when he won a $5.8 million lottery jackpot in Michigan in 1988. With his first annual $290,000 payment he bought not one but five new cars.

Spending so fast he couldn’t pay taxes, Sommers asked a businessman friend to manage his money. One day in the mid-’90s Sommers went to the bank and discovered all his money was gone—frittered away by his friend’s bad investments and shady deals.

To make ends meet, he took a pizza delivery job. “People recognized me and it was humiliating,” says Sommers. “One minute I’m famous and five years later I’m broke. It’s been a rollercoaster ride.”

Single and living near Detroit, Sommers now does construction work. “I’m still bitter and I’ll be bitter the rest of my life,” he says. “I think I’d be further along today if I had never won.”

William Post, 64, Won: $16.2 million, Outcome: Brother hired a hit man to kill him

Gone are the days when William Post, 64, would find a pair of pants he liked and buy 400 of them. Gone too are the mansion, farm, cars and diamonds. In fact, looking around Post’s ramshackle home in Pennsylvania, you’d never suspect that in 1988 he won $16.2 million.

As an overnight multimillionaire, Post indulged himself with lavish and sometimes bizarre spending sprees. In 1994 his brother Jeffrey pleaded no contest to hiring a hit man to kill Post and his then wife, Connie, allegedly in order to get his hands on Post’s estate. Spooked by the plot, Connie left Post not long after.

Today Post lives on a $558 monthly Social Security disability check. Despite declaring bankruptcy in 1994 and suffering from health problems including severe asthma, Post maintains, “I’m a very happy man now. Money can’t buy peace of mind.”

Vocabulary Focus

fritter (v) [5fritE] to waste money, time or an opportunity

shady (adj) [5Feidi] dishonest or illegal (informal)

make ends meet (idiom) to have just enough money to pay for things one needs

ramshackle (adj) [5rAm7FAkl] badly or untidily made and likely to break or fall down easily

Specialized Terms

hit man (n phr) 杀手 a person paid to murder someone

no contest (n phr) 不抗辩；缄默 a plea made by a defendant that doesn’t admit guilt or declare innocence; this plea subjects the defendant to conviction as in the case of a guilty plea but does not obstruct denial of the truth of the charges in another proceeding; also called “nolo contendere,” a Latin phrase meaning “I do not wish to contend (argue)”

allegedly (adv) 所谓地，假设（某人不法或有罪）地 supposedly; relating to saying that someone has done something illegal or wrong without giving proof

Social Security (n phr) 社会安全制度，（美国）老人社会福利金 a system of payments made by the government to people who are ill, poor or who have no job; in the U.S. payments are made to old people, those whose spouses have died, or people who are unable to work because they are ill