The 55-year old man, who rarely got visits from relatives, was suddenly getting one visit after another from his “loved ones.”
The nursing staff,
according to TampaBay, started noticing the man coming home with bags and bags
filled with items from TJ Maxx and other department stores. His walls were
covered with stacks of shoe boxes as well.
Malcolm Ramsey
Ramsey had won the lottery.
He didn’t win the big Powerball lottery, but he won $403,288, enough to change
a person’s life forever. There were two options: $500 per week for life or a
lump sum payment. He took the lump sum and now it’s practically gone.
The man spent all the money
in just four weeks. He is also in danger of losing his government benefits
because he received so much money at one time.
Judge Lauren Laughlin says
that the state should have had something in place to stop itself from giving so
much money to one person in a lump sum.
“You clearly can’t be
giving this kind of money to people who have had the right to manage their own
financial affairs removed,” Laughlin said to Tampabay.com. “You would like it
to be a Forrest Gump time, good for you, but not with $170,000 walking out the
door in 30 days.”
Ramsey has been diagnosed
with paranoid schizophrenia and doesn’t take medication. An adult protective
services worker noted that, in 2002, “It is your petitioner’s belief that Mr.
Ramsey is incapable of caring for himself and/or his finances.”
After the adult protection
services worker deemed the man to be incapable of managing his own money, Aging
Solutions, a non-profit organization, was put in charge of his finances. In the
home where he currently resides, he is allowed to come and go as he pleases and
is given $54 per month as an allowance. He was a regular customer of the Quick
Pick Gas station, where he regularly bought lottery tickets.
After winning $1,000 last year,
the man spent a lot of his money trying for the biggest payoff.
“He was chasing that
ticket,” the owner of the store says. “He used to buy that ticket all time.”
When he won, the owner,
Ajah Shah, says that there was no emotional reaction.
“There was no emotion on
his face at all,” Shah said. “People normally are very excited, jumping
around.”
When the man received his
$302,446 after taxes, he went and got a cashier’s check from Wells Fargo, where
he’d opened an account. He then cashed the check at an Amscot store that
charged him $14,000 in check cashing fees for just one transaction.
Ramsey received $19,678 in
cash and 268 money orders worth $1,000 each. He then went shopping
consistently, spending as many as 21 money orders in one day. He bought an
$8,000 TV on Black Friday and 40 Timex Watches for his relatives.
The people at the facility
became concerned when this man who’d received so few visits suddenly had
relatives coming to see him in droves. That’s when they called his guardian.
“It was people who were
around that had never been around before,” says Lona DiCerb, director of
operations at Aging Solutions. “That’s troublesome when family he’d never spoke
of prior began coming around.”
Police were able to recover
some funds, but most of the money is gone. Anyone found to have taken advantage
of Ramsey during the ordeal may be subject to criminal charges. It is illegal
to exploit a disabled or elderly person in Florida, which has a large senior
population. Violating this law can lead to up to 30 years in prison.
Financial Juneteenth
lessons from this story:
1) If you ever come into a
lot of money, don’t tell your relatives. They will be the first ones to guilt
trip you into giving everything away
2) Lottery tickets are
typically a horrible investment. Avoid them like the plague.
3) Visiting loved ones who
are in homes for the elderly is one of the most important investments you can
ever make. But if you want your children to visit you when you are older, you
have to invest in them while they are young.
4) Avoid check cashing
places. That’s a serious drain on your finances.
Tampabay
Such is life
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