Lawrence Candlish is a former lottery winner who won 5.5 million pounds in 1997 (almost 6.5 million euros), but who has since ended up penniless and claiming disability benefits back home in UK. Candlish, originally from Gateshead, won the fortune at the age of 23, then distributing the winnings among his relatives, including his sister, Melanie Batey.
With his prize Candlish bought seven houses around his own for his relatives and donated £1.2 million to a dozen relatives. A Newcastle United fan, after thugs burned down his house, he decided to move to Alicante, where he bought a property in Santa Pola that he named Casa Shearer, in honour of the legendary footballer Alan Shearer.
Along with his father, Frank, he opened an Irish-themed bar and restaurant.
Despite his windfall, Candlish squandered his prize money and declared bankruptcy before his father committed suicide in 2009. Despite residing outside the UK, and suffering from a bone disease, Candlish claimed disability benefit, while failing to notify the UK authorities that he was living in Spain. As such, he was able to fraudulently pocket £13,365 between May 2005 and December 2010 .
His sister, who suffers from paraplegia, also moved to Spain with her husband in 2007, where she also continued to claim over £23,000 in income support and disability benefits, despite having received £800,000 of her brother’s lottery prize.
In October 2012, both Candlish and Batey pleaded guilty at Newcastle Crown Court. Both received a sentence of nine months in prison suspended for 18 months. Registrar Tim Roberts QC warned them: “They both knew what they were doing was fraudulent.”
Before his lottery win, Candlish was barely making ends meet on a weekly wage of £125 as a factory worker.
More cases of disgraced lottery winners
Candlish isn’t the only lottery winner to have squandered his fortune. A metalworker who won a £7.5m prize in 1998 lost everything in messy divorce case.
Callie Rogers, Britain’s youngest lottery winner, who won £1.9m in 2003, spent thousands of pounds on wild parties, three breast augmentation operations, drugs and around £300,000 sterling on designer clothes. Eighteen years after her success she was applying for Universal Credit, a UK state benefit, after spending her entire fortune.
The list of lottery winners who ended up penniless, then separating from their loved ones and even ending up in jail continues to grow. However, the Candlish case is a clear example of how a stroke of luck can take an unexpected twist. After his boom times and his fall from grace, in 2010 he returned home from Spain penniless.
Vince Ward, his defence attorney during the trial, noted that since his win, Candlish had fallen on hard times. His restaurant business had gone bankrupt and his father had taken his own life. These traumatic experiences illustrate the grim consequences that can sometimes come with a lottery windfall.
They were each given nine months’ in jail, suspended for 18 months.
