#Lottery ticket florida quickpick driver

'That's troublesome when family he'd never spoke of prior began coming around.'ДЄlthough rumors swirled that Ramsey had won the lottery, he wouldn't reveal anything to an Aging Solutions manager who went to see him. 'It was people who were around that had never been around before,' says Lona DiCerb, director of operations at Aging Solutions, the nonprofit then in charge of Ramsey's care. It was the sudden appearance of Ramsey's relatives at Loving Care that prompted the facility to contact his guardian in mid November. He also loaded up on $19.95 Timex watches for everyone in his family. With Springer or one of his sisters driving, Ramsey also went to Tyrone Square Mall, the Ellenton outlet mall and the Wagon Wheel Flea Market, buying so many new clothes he had to get several plastic bins to hold them all. 29, when he got $8,000 and bought flat-screen TVs at Walmart. Almost every other day after that, he cashed multiple money orders, including the big shopping day of Black Friday, Nov. Ramsey took $19,678 in cash and 268 money orders, each for $1,000.ДЄs an investigator would later learn, Ramsey cashed 21 of the money orders on a single day, Nov. Amscot charged him more than $14,000 in fees. Instead, Ramsey got a cashier's check from Wells Fargo for $302,466 and immediately cashed it at an Amscot store. Shah, the Quick Pick manager, says he counseled him to be careful with all that money. It took a few days before Ramsey's winnings, $302,446 after taxes, became available. Ramsey and Springer returned home the same day. Petersburg man turns $1 into $500 a week for life,' read the lottery's brief press release. At lottery headquarters, Ramsey presented his ID and a woman asked if he wanted his photo taken. 30, they set off for Tallahassee in Springer's cab. Springer loaned him another $50 to open an account at Wells Fargo so the Florida Lottery would have a place to wire the winnings.ДЇinally, at 3:30 a.m. He used the certificate to get a new ID card from the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. With money borrowed from Springer, Ramsey rode a bus to Largo and got a copy of his birth certificate from the Pinellas County Vital Statistics Office. Springer called lottery headquarters in Tallahassee to see what Ramsey needed to claim his prize.

#Lottery ticket florida quickpick driver

Instead he turned to Charlie Springer, a driver for Bats Taxi who sometimes idles his cab at the Quick Pick when business is slow. 'People normally are very excited, jumping around.' 'There was no emotion on his face at all,' Shah recalls. A few weeks later he told Shah he had a winner. Ramsey says he put the ticket in a shirt pocket, hung the shirt in his closet and padlocked the door. Ramsey is incapable of caring for himself and/or his finances.' He mowed lawns, washed dishes and worked in a warehouse before mental illness took hold and never let go.Дiagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Ramsey 'doesn't take his medications (and) has been involuntarily hospitalized several times,' an adult protective services officer wrote in 2002. Malcolm Ramsey, gray-bearded and missing most of his front teeth, can express himself but speaks in short sentences and a low, flat voice. 'You would like it to be a Forrest Gump time, good for you, but not with $170,000 walking out the door in 30 days.' 'You clearly can't be giving this kind of money to people who have had the right to manage their own financial affairs removed,' Laughlin says. Judge Lauren Laughlin, who monitors Ramsey's guardianship, sees another problem: Why was there nothing to keep the Florida Lottery from handing over thousands of dollars to someone that a court found incapable of caring for himself? He says he wanted the cash, but by taking it all he is in danger of losing the government benefits he has relied on to survive. In barely four weeks, Ramsey blew through more than half the money, with little of value to show for it. He took it as a lump-sum payout - $403,288. With the help of a cab driver, he had gotten an ID, a copy of his birth certificate and a ride to Tallahassee to claim the prize. Sometime in October, Ramsey had won '$500 a week for life' on a scratch-off Florida Lottery ticket.