A lotto winner has told of the “absolute hell” she experienced scooping £1.8million. Lara Griffiths, 54, and husband Roger became instant millionaires after they won the lottery in October 2005.
Back then the happy couple from West Yorkshire were both in their mid-thirties, with Lara working as a performing arts teacher and Roger as an IT manager.
Their eldest daughter Ruby was only 22 months old at the time. But in the years after their huge win everything fell apart, as the pair endured a house fire and a divorce – and ended up spending all their winnings, The Mirror reports.
“There wasn’t really any common sense involved at the time. I don’t even recall a conversation with Roger about how to manage the money – I just remember there was an awful lot of panic and absurdity,” Lara said.
Lara and Roger met at university and married in 1997. They then became the first online winners of the lottery in 2005 and they received an email to tell them about the “exciting news”.
“It was about 2.30am and Roger started calling me upstairs to look at the computer screen, which said our balance was £1.8 million,” Lara recalled. “We didn’t believe it was true – I was convinced it was a prank.”
However, Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery at the time, verified the win over the phone and the pair went public.
The pair wasted no time in embarking on a spending spree. They quit their jobs and enjoyed plush breaks in Dubai, Florida and France. They then bought a beauty salon for £150,000 and moved into a £450,000 bar conversion. However, their good fortune was only temporary before disaster struck.
In December 2010, their lavish new home was destroyed in a fire. “We had a catastrophic house fire,” Lara recalled.
“The whole place burned down while I was at work, but Roger, the two children and the dogs were inside. It was a nightmare – we lost all of our possessions too. We didn’t even have clothes to wear. Our home burned for three days.”
The family were forced to stay in hotels and with Lara’s mother for the next eight months while their home was made liveable again.
Lara says the cause of the inferno, which started in the utility room, has never been determined despite an investigation being carried out. “Nobody was injured, but my daughter Kitty still has some PTSD issues from the fire,” she added.
They moved back in July 2011, but the misery continued for Lara and a few months later her marriage to Roger ended. She says the following two years were “absolute hell” as she was trying to raise her two daughters while grieving the end of her marriage. By the time their divorce was finalised in December 2013, she says they had no money left.
“I had to sell the house, sell my business and then sell everything that I owned,” she says. “It was an absolute disaster. It really was awful. I’ve got Crohn’s disease – I was about 6st at that point. But I was just trying to keep the children content and not lose my mind.”
Lara had no choice but to rely on her mum financially for a year. She lives in the same home as her mum and daughters Ruby, 20, and Kitty, 17, to this day. She retrained as a tattooist and runs a studio in her garden. Despite all of the anguish she experienced since her lottery win, Lara insists, “I love my life now. OK, I’ve been through some really difficult moments, but I don’t regret winning. I regret not having the money any more, but I plan to make it back somehow.”
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