The Unluckiest Winner

Abraham Lee Shakespeare was born on 24 April 1966 in Lakeland, Florida, the youngest of four children of seasonal orange pickers. He left school after the seventh grade and never learned to read or write. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He worked in the citrus fields as a teenager and later took manual jobs: dishwasher, garbage man, hauling concrete blocks, sweeping floors at a friend's barber shop. this part of the story is covered for now He had two sons, Moses, born in 1998 to Antoinette Andrews, and later Jeremiah, with Santoria Butler. details of the account remain covered until revealed

On 15 November 2006 he was on a delivery run to Miami with the driver Michael Ford when they stopped at a convenience store in Frostproof. Shakespeare had five single dollars in his wallet. He handed two of them to Ford and asked him to buy two quick picks. The tickets won $30 million. He took the lump sum, about $17 million after taxes. He paid the child support, bought a $100,000 BMW and a truck, and bought a $1.1 million house with an indoor pool and a four-car garage on Red Hawk Bend Drive. He gave his stepfather a million dollars, each of his three stepsisters $250,000, paid off friends' mortgages, handed out cash to homeless people, and was called the Santa Claus of Lakeland. His mother refused to move into the new house, saying it had bad vibes and that the money was a curse.

In April 2007 Michael Ford sued him, claiming the lottery tickets had been stolen from his wallet, and demanded at least a million dollars. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Shakespeare said he did not hold it against Ford and would have given him $250,000 if he had asked. By late 2008, however, he was down to $3.5 million.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Within weeks she had become his financial adviser.

On 2 January 2009 she transferred $246,493 from his Bank of America account into her company. On 9 January the ownership of his $1.1 million mansion was transferred to the company. On 15 January he signed an asset purchase agreement giving her the right to collect his outstanding loans; she allegedly paid him $185,000, money the prosecution later said had been his in the first place. this part of the story is covered for now She told the branch manager, Doug Hancock, not to give Shakespeare any money, and then produced minutes of a board meeting attended only by herself to give herself sole authority to write cheques. On 11 February $1,095,000 from his Prudential annuities account was deposited into the LLC account. A week later two cashier's cheques totalling $500,000 went to accounts controlled by her boyfriend, Shar Krasniqi. She bought him a 2008 Corvette for $70,390.86 and herself a 2009 Hummer for about $90,000.

details of the account remain covered until revealed It was the last day anyone saw him alive. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He dug a hole about nine or ten feet deep with a front-end loader, and that evening, after dark, she called him back to fill it in. She paid him $200. A few days later a contractor poured a 30-foot by 30-foot concrete slab over the spot. Investigators would later say Shakespeare was shot twice in the chest with a .38 calibre revolver in her office, his body taken to the property in a trailer and put in the hole, covered with bags of lime, and buried.

this part of the story is covered for now She sent texts from his phone, and people noticed the messages were correctly spelt, which the illiterate Shakespeare could never have managed. She moved into his mansion, emptied out his belongings, and took his mother to dinner and to Disney World. On 9 November 2009 his cousin Cedric Edmondson reported him missing to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. Posters went up, including at the Super Choice Meat Market where he used to hang out.

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it On Christmas Day Elizabeth Walker received a call from a private number; she said the voice did not sound like her son. The number belonged to Krasniqi, but the call had been made by Gregory Todd Smith, the barber and friend to whom Shakespeare had lent $63,000 to save his mother's house. this part of the story is covered for now He admitted the call and agreed to wear a wire.

details of the account remain covered until revealed She said, 'I'm so deep in this with you right now. If you go down, I go down.' She talked of a drug dealer named Ronald who had killed Abraham, and then she and Smith forged a letter to his mother, typing it on a new laptop in a hotel room while she wore gloves and a hairnet. She asked Smith to find someone willing to take the fall for the murder and offered $50,000. The 'cousin' was in fact Mike Smith, an undercover narcotics officer with the Lake Wales Police Department. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it She told him there would be $67,000 in cash on the body and to bring marshmallows because they would have to burn it.

That night Smith called her to say police were at the property. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed On 29 January 2010, after three days of digging, Shakespeare's body was found six feet down beneath the slab and identified by fingerprints; the clothing matched the video from 6 April 2009. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed Her ex-husband testified about digging the hole, Krasniqi about the gifts, Elizabeth Walker about the last time she saw her son and the fake Christmas call, Santoria Butler about being offered a house and a car to lie, and Greg Smith testified for three days. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now In 2017 Antoinette Andrews, Moses's mother, won a million dollars on a scratchcard. details of the account remain covered until revealed Abraham's family were left to mourn a man the detectives described as a simple man who never hurt anyone and did not deserve what happened to him.