The man who won the lottery continued with his everyday life, which was used by some to blackmail him – Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images.
For a man from Brazil, winning the lottery became a real ordeal, so much so that his million-dollar prize took him to his grave.
It was in 2020 when a 55-year-old man named Jonas Lucas Alves Dias won a lottery prize equivalent to $9 million by matching the winning combination of the Mega-Sena draw, his country’s national lottery game.
Unlike most lottery winners, Alves Dias chose to continue his lifestyle. He continued to live in the same house with his family in the small town of Hortolândia; he did not hire private security and continued to frequent the same places, so practically all his neighbors knew his movements and what he did with his money.
The only thing that this Brazilian lottery winner did change was to quit his job as a tool salesman. He bought a farm in a city near his town, gave his childhood best friend a pick-up truck, and he paid for the treatment of another friend who was sick with cancer.
According to the local press, Jonas was a simple, humble, and kind-hearted man, so the only bad thing that happened in his life was winning the lottery, as he lived an absolute hell.
On September 14, police found Alves Dias seriously injured inside a car on a highway in Sao Paulo. Although he was rushed to the hospital, he died a couple of hours later.
According to the authorities’ investigations, the man left his house for a walk on the day of the tragedy and never returned. Everything indicates that he had previously been extorted and kidnapped for about 20 hours.
His captors had allegedly demanded the payment of some $600,000, which has been confirmed by audios obtained by a television channel in which the man is heard, somewhat desperately, asking a bank employee to approve the transfer, a move that the bank staff refused to make, considering that the amount of money was “unreal.”
The lines of investigation have led to 4 suspects having committed the extortion that resulted in the death of this lottery winner; 2 of them have already been arrested. It is also known that the criminals withdrew about $4,000 from the victim’s account.
The Civil Police maintains that the fortune he won in 2020 was the motive for the attack and has opened an investigation for the crime of larceny (robbery followed by death), as well as extortion and homicide.