here are a few people who became rich overnight! 8 - kevin lewishow often do people go into a casino and really beat the house? in this case, one guy did beat the house,although it was completely by luck and the casino decided to play nice anyways. horseshoe casino of cincinnati ohio accidentallygave a million each to two distinct cincinnati locals named kevin lewis, after it let thewrong kevin lewis to first collect the prize. however, obviously, a different guy namedkevin lewis won the prize. horseshoe casino actually owned up to itsmistake and let the super lucky kevin lewis
collect on the prize. while reps for the casino declined to providespecifics on the two-step verification process the contest employs, they did say one of thethings that threw them off was the fact that the second kevin lewis was around the sameage. also, the kevin lewis that actually won wasn’tin the casino when his name was called. there were several other similarities betweenthe two kevins that led to the confusion. of course, the real kevin lewis who was supposedto win the prize was paid as well. in an interesting follow-up, the kevin lewisthat wasn’t supposed to win the money spent all of the money within a year somehow, andwas actually eventually arrested on hug charges.
hey if you’re enjoying this video so far,do us a favor and hit that like button for us! on to the next millionaire! 7 - sandy steinsandy stein is another hard working person who had an idea and decided to turn her ideainto reality. stein had worked for 35 years as a flightattendant, but after going after her idea, she’s now in a completely different professionwith her invention, finders key purse. she came up with the idea because she wasconsistently having trouble finding her keys at the bottom of her purse!
so she came up with essentially a decorativekey holder that hangs off the side of purses so keys can be easily found. her idea was so popular, she was able to sellone million of these key finders in her first year! her company has had over 40 million dollarsin sales over 11 years, a figure that’s not too shabby for such a simple idea. since she’s gotten rich, stein says thatshe’s traveled a lot, but her dumbest purchase was paying full price cash for a lexus withouteven negotiating. as for the smartest thing she’s investedin?
a team of lawyers whose sole purpose is toprotect her patent from any copycats out there. can’t disagree with that one! 6 - oscar and lorene stohlerfinding oil on your property and making you a multi-millionaire is a pipe dream that’smore from the past than right now. however, apparently that dream can still happen! that’s essentially what happened to oscarand lorene stohler, who were 83 and 82 years old at the time. oscar was raised on that property in northdakota and ranched there for nearly seven decades!
obviously, he never gave much thought to whatwas beneath the ground. when oilmen wanted to drill on his propertyback in 2008, stohler of course doubted that oil would be found two miles underground onhis property. he even joked that he would buy a cadillacconvertible and put big horns on it! well, they did find oil on their property,and in less than a year, oscar and lorene became millionaires from the well! the wealth wasn’t long lived as oscar passedaway shortly after. however, the couple was able to enjoy thewealth a little bit by buying a new home, paid in cash of course.
they also established trust accounts for theirfour children. lorene said the only splurge was an automaticsprinkler system for her flowers that surround the couple's new home. and oscar bought a $1,000 ring for his wifeto celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. 5 - marv donigerwhenever you get cancer, it’s devastating news. however, when you find out that you’ve hadcancer for years, because your full-time medical doctor neglected to analyze your disease,it’s much much worse. this is essentially the story of marv doniger,a management consultant by profession.
doniger had to get his bladder removed andhe wasn’t able to walk for quite awhile. however, he was able to collect $3.3 milliondollars after successfully suing in court. after getting his windfall, doniger didn’tmake any splashy purchases. he only bought 2 poodles and a car. he also set up trust funds for his grandchildren. doniger said that anyone that’s presentedwith a sudden lump of cash is left with set of choices. you can use it to satisfy near-term desires,or use it to ensure your financial future. he said to develop a strategy for dealingwith those rainy days that are definitely
going to come. that and to be aware of those people who presentyou with investment ideas you don't understand and don't need to achieve your financial goals. hey, i don’t think we can disagree withany of those statements! 4 - david gehleanyone of you guys out there join an office pool for a lottery? yes? same for us here at pablito’s way! this is exactly how david gehle won his millions,in a pool for a lotter with his co-workers.
we’ve always thought that it be tough toactually get the money split right in these situations, but apparently it can be done. together with seven of his co-workers at conagrafoods, gehle won a share of $365 million dollars in the lottery in 2006. his share after taxes: about $15 million. that’s a lot smaller number than 365 million,but in any case for david gehle, it's still a big win. dave apparently has been living happily everafter. some portion of gehle's happy ending has includedoutings to vietnam with another coworker who
had won. he’s been trying to stay out of the spotlight,and apparently he frequently turns down interviews. after his win, his life didn’t change much. he still lives a normal life. he shovels snow for his neighbors in the winter. for a while after he won he stayed at hisjob at conagra, but he finally quit. he’s claimed to haven’t bought anythingdumb. he's been moderate with his win. he stayed in his 720-square-foot, $88,000dollar house.
it wasn’t until 2011, that gehle purchaseda new home for $450,000 thousand. gehle is apparently one of those lottery winnerswhose smart with his money. he now drives around in a 2015 nissan roguesuv. he only buys things when he needs it. his advice to lottery winners? be really careful; be frugal. don't blow it all. invest. it's really tempting to spend it all.
don't. 3 - jack whittakerif you’re one of those people who read up on lottery winners a lot, you may have heardof jack whittaker. he was the winner of a huge 2002 lottery jackpotof $314.9 million in the powerball! it was the largest jackpot ever won by a singlewinning ticket at the time. okay, maybe he doesn’t really belong onthis list, because what a lot of people don’t know is the fact that whittaker was alreadya multi-millionaire at the time of the win. he’s one of the few rich people who playedthe lottery for fun. however, his story is too interesting to leaveoff, and he did win a huge amount of money.
i think most people that follow lottery winnersknow what happens next. let’s just say things got a little weirdfor whittaker! whittaker first gave 10% of his rewards tochristian foundations in southern west virginia. he also used $14 million to build up the jackwhittaker foundation, a non-benefit association that gives nourishment and attire to low-payfamilies in provincial west virginia. in addition, he bought the person who soldhim the winning ticket a $123,000 dollar house and a brand new jeep cherokee. even after doing these nice things, whittakercouldn’t turn around his luck. his problems started mounting.
a year after winning, he was robbed of around545 thousand dollars cash that was in a suitcase in his car. another year later, the same thing happenedagain, except this time it was only 200 grand. and the money was recovered. then his granddaughter was found bread andhe was somehow a suspect. then there were more robberies and more legaltroubles that piled up over the years since the lottery win. and oh yeah, his uninsured house burnt downto the ground in 2016. sounds like being a famous lottery winneris probably a lot worse than just being an
anonymous rich guy! hopefully whittaker’s fortune eventuallyturns around. 2 - jonathan duhameljonathan duhamel is a canadian professional poker player who’s known for winning thebiggest event in poker, the world series of poker main event. his career earnings took off when he won almost9 million dollars when he won the 2010 main event title and became the first canadianplayer to win the main event title. before that huge payday his previous biggestwin was around 55 thousand dollars. after he won, duhamel chose to give $100,000of his prize money to the montreal canadiens
children's foundation, which was the biggestdonation ever given to them. duhamel wasn’t just a lucky guy who happenedto bink a tournament, as he’s captured other prestigious titles to fully solidify his statusas an elite poker player. as of march 2018, his career tournament winningstotal more than 17.8 million dollars. what’s your favorite rags to riches story? how would you like to get a few million dollars? by winning the lottery? or by selling a business? or by getting a high paying job and savingto millions?
let us know in the comments! 1 - jan koumimagine working on a business that hasn’t really been making money for you for years. but you’re absolutely convinced in the idea,and the tech behind the idea. you’re essentially working for free on theidea and you’re burning through a lot of your personal cash in order to create yourvision. however, one day someone decides to buy yourtech and all of a sudden you’re a billionaire. this is essentially the jan koum story asincredulous as it sounds! back in 2009, koum purchased an iphone andunderstood that essentially the next big thing
was to develop app within apple’s app store. koum decided on developing whatsapp, as hethought that it would be really cool to have statuses next to individual names of the peoplein a phone book! the statuses would show if you were on a call,your battery was low, or you were at the gym. koum very quickly picked the name whatsappin light of the fact that it sounded like "what's up". whatsapp essentially became instant messagingwith a bunch of great features, such as the famous double checkmark that allows someoneto know you’ve read their message. whatsapp eventually got facebook's attention.
mark zuckerberg reached out to koum, and infebruary of 2014, zuckerberg met koum over for dinner and made a proposal to buy whatsappfor a whopping 19 billion dollars! of course, koum accepted. i doubt koum will ever have to stand in linefor food stamps, like he did when he first moved to california. here’s what’s next!