🎉 Unveil the unbelievable journey of a waitress who stumbled upon a $10 million jackpot with a simple tip! 💸 From unexpected windfalls to legal battles and daring escapes, this story is packed with twists you won’t see coming! Get ready to be hooked! 🌪️
A waitress named Tonda Dickerson had her life completely changed when she got a winning lottery ticket as a tip.
Even though having an extra $10 million might seem great, it didn’t turn out so well for Tonda. She got the ticket from a regular customer named Edward Seward in March 1999 while working at a Waffle House in Alabama.
To her surprise, the ticket had the winning numbers for a $10 million jackpot (which would be around $18.9 million today). She decided to get the money over 30 years and quit her job.
But things got messy because Seward had given lottery tickets to four other employees as tips that day. When they didn’t win anything, they demanded a share of Tonda’s win, claiming they had agreed to split any winnings.
They even took her to court over it. However, the court said their agreement wasn’t valid under Alabama law because it involved gambling.
Then Seward sued Tonda, saying she promised to share the winnings with her colleagues. But the court found no evidence of this and ruled in Tonda’s favor.
But the trouble didn’t end there. Two years later, Tonda’s ex-husband kidnapped her and threatened to kill her. She managed to escape by shooting him and convincing him to go to the hospital.
Then she faced another problem with the IRS. They wanted her to pay almost $1 million in gift taxes because she set up a business to manage the money and gave her family access to some of it.
