LOTTERY winners aren't always going to be deserving of their extreme good fortune — but some really do push their luck.
This week it was revealed that jackpot winner Gillian Bayford claimed nearly £40,000 in furlough cash despite winning £148million in 2012.
The 48-year-old millionaire, who drives a £150,000 Bentley Bentayga, took a handout for her £17million property business and vowed: "I'm not paying it back."
Furlough cash was funnelled into businesses Bayford runs with her husband Brian Deans, a convicted fraudster who stole £13,500 in fake refunds from Tesco.
“It’s ridiculous she’s claimed taxpayers’ money while renting out houses from her personal property empire," fumed Tory MP Nigel Mills.
"We’ll all be paying more tax for years to come to fund claims like these."
But mum-of-three Bayford says: "Obviously everyone’s entitled to furlough and everyone’s claimed it."
There is no suggestion Bayford did anything wrong in claiming the money.
But there are plenty of lottery winners who broke the law — including some whom did so after after winning the jackpot.
Rapists winning millions
One of the least-deserving winners is Iorworth Hoare — who bought his winning ticket on day release from prison.
He scooped £7.2million in 2004 while serving a life sentence for attempted rape.
By the time of his release in 2005, he'd been inside for a total of 33 years for a string of sex attacks, including rape, beginning when he was just 21.
He was one of three winners who split a staggering £21million Lotto Extra jackpot.
Hoare's win prompted national outrage, with calls for players to be vetted before being awarded their cash.
In 2011 it was revealed he'd filled up his six-bed £700,000 mansion with expensive works of art and antiques as investments.
But he was forced out of the sprawling Newcastle home a year later when the words "leave or die" were spray-pained on its gates, years after anotherman was jailed for sending him fake bullets as a threat.
In 2009, another rapist became a multi-millionaire when he scooped £4.5million on the National Lottery.
The unnamed attacker won while serving seven years for assaulting a teenage girl after previously being jailed for stabbing a neighbour.
Government plans were drawn up that year to confiscate windfalls from violent criminals who harm victims and then go on to win the lottery.
But the proposals were scrapped after being deemed unrealistic.
Today, almost 2,500 prisoners still play the lottery while in prison, according to The Forward Trust, with lags using smuggled phones to buy tickets online.
'Every time I screamed he would punch me'
Another rapist even managed to claim lottery millions without buying a winning ticket.
Edward Putman received £2.5million when he conspired with Camelot security employee Giles Knibbs to create a fake winning slip.
The pair's successful 2009 plot only came to light when Knibbs killed himself six years ago.
They fell out when Putman refused to give Knibbs his agreed £1million cut of the scam for providing Putman the winning numbers of an unclaimed jackpot.
Putman even contacted the police to claim Knibbs was blackmailing him.
Fearing prison, Knibbs told friends about his role in the fraud before taking his own life.
In 2019, Putman was jailed for nine years for the record-breaking blag, with Judge Philip Grey saying: "You would have got away with this but quite plainly you were greedy."
Putman, who also fraudulantly claimed for benefits after the lottery scam, raped a pregnant 17-year-old girl when he was 25 in 1991.
"He knew I was expecting when he attacked me," the unnamed victim told The Mirror.
"He said every time I screamed he would punch me again.
"It happened about 20 more times. I really thought my head was going to cave in."
She was eventually awarded £50,000 compensation for the trauma she suffered, which she donated to charity.
£2k cocaine and eight-girl orgies
Michael Carroll won £9.7million in 2002 aged 19 – after already racking updozens of convictions for joyriding, criminal damage, and theft.
And his offences continued after his win, including being slapped with an ASBO in 2005 for smashing windows of cars and shops by catapulting steel balls at them from his Mercedes van.
He was also jailed for nine months in 2006 for affray after threatening teenagers with a baseball bat at a Christian concert.
During the trial, it emerged he'd committed 42 previous offences.
Carroll's wife, Sandra, left him just a month after their wedding in 2003 after being appalled by his incessant partying, accusing him of cheating on her with sex workers.
She took £1.4million in a settlement – but once she was gone, Michael really dialled up the hedonism with what he called "Roman-style orgies" at his five-bed Norfolk mansion while spending £2,000 on cocaine in a single day.
“In every room in my house people would be f*** ing," Michael said.
"Women would just come up to me and offer me sex.
“The girls would have all their gear off and they’d be serving cocaine on silver plates.
“I think the most women I have been with in one night is eight. That’s why they call me Master Micky.”
Now 38, Michael lost his entire fortune and was found working for £10 an hour chopping wood and delivering coal in 2019.
Skipping court for sunshine
Former chip shop worker Leah Sumray won £1million in 2007 — but ended up behind bars less than a year later for failing to testify at someone else's trial.
She ignored a witness summons to give evidence in an assault case, instead jetting off on a £2,000 luxury holiday to Fuerteventura.
Sumray, who was 21 at the time of her win, was jailed for 14 days for contempt of court.
"I know I did something wrong and I'm sorry," she told The Mirror in 2008.
"But I feel I was made an example of because I was a Lotto winner."
McDonald's drunk drive-thru
Jane Restorick was even younger when she bagged her £1million, becoming Britain's youngest EuroMillions winner at just 17.
Previously known as Jane Park, she scooped the seven-figure fortune on her first ever lotto ticket which she bought in 2013.
But just four years later, Restorick admitted drink driving after being found to be three times over the legal limit in a McDonald's drive-thru in Edinburgh.
Aged 21 at the time, she paid a £900 fine and was banned from driving for 18 months.
It came after she was previously fined £110 for assaulting a bouncer at Edinburgh's City Nightclub in 2015.
The now 25-year-old model started an OnlyFans account in 2019 and recently boasted that March was her "biggest earning month".
Last year, she revealed she'd already earned £25,000 selling topless snaps.
Selling heroin and stealing trees
Nina Hughes' was homeless before she won £700,000 in 2005, which dramatically changed her fortunes and allowed her to buy two houses.
But by 2013 she became addicted to heroin and was caught selling the drug to fund her habit two years later.
The mum-of-four, who was also selling crack, avoided prison in the sting operation which saw nine other people jailed.
Instead, she was given a three-month curfew along with a two-year suspended sentence.
But that wasn't the end of her legal troubles.
Her life spiralled out of control
In 2018, she was back in court again — for stealing a bay tree from outside a pub in Kent.
She was sentenced to five days in jail for the crime.
Tom Dunn, defending at an earlier hearing, said that after a series of relationships with “inadequate men” she ended up bringing up four children by herself.
“She became homeless, began drinking and her life spiralled out of control but in 2005, after the birth of her fourth child, she enrolled at Dover South Kent College and became vice-president of the Students Union.
"Then an extraordinary piece of good fortune came her way when she won £691,000 on the National Lottery and bought two houses.”
At her 2018 sentencing, judge Simon James told Huges she was on her "last warning".
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