Sherif Girgis was a struggling part-time cinema worker when he scooped the £17million jackpot in Australia back in 2007, he splurged on luxuries at the advice of someone who he then sued
A part-time cinema worker who won a massive lottery jackpot ended up blowing it all on ill-advised investments. Sherif Girgis was just 23 when he hit the £17million jackpot in an Australian lottery back in 2007.
He later successfully sued the man who gave him the bad advice, claiming at the time that his recommendations were solid. He splashed out £1.5million on a nightclub and snapped up an 80-foot yacht for £500,000. He also poured £750,000 into renovating a pub, but the business venture flopped, losing £600,000 over the next three years.
After the dust settled on his spending spree, he found himself a staggering £14million in the red.
He sought £1.9million in damages against former city councillor Russell Poliwka in 2014 and five years later, in 2019, he was awarded £1.12million by the supreme court. Since winning his lawsuit against Poliwka, Girgis has kept a low profile and little has been heard from him since.
In other lottery news, a woman couldn’t believe her luck when her husband won £400,000 – after splashing out £80 on scratch cards. The Louisville man told Kentucky Lottery officials he had tucked the pile of tickets into a birthday card for his wife as a gift, reports the Daily Star.
She was reportedly in disbelief when one of the $20 Wild Numbers 100X tickets turned out to be a $500,000 winner.
The bloke shared: “She comes walking in the living room and she says, ‘Please tell me you didn’t give me a joke card.’ I said, ‘What? ‘ She said it again and I said, ‘Babe, I don’t joke about money'”. “She says, ‘I need you to look at this.’ She showed it to me. I was stunned. I looked at it again and I said, ‘Yeah, this is unbelievable.'”.
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