Mia Williams
A server who was gifted a lottery ticket which turned out to be worth $10 million has fought in lawsuits and has been chased by the IRS over the win.
In 1999, Tonda Lynn Dickerson was working at a Waffle House restaurant in Grand Bay, Alabama.
A regular, named Edward Seward, gave five employees at the restaurant lottery tickets on the day of a huge draw.
Three people there opened their envelopes on that day, but none of them had the winning ticket.
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The following day, two more of the employees opened their envelopes, one of which being Tonda, who realized that she had just walked into a life-changing amount of money.
Everyone working at the Waffle House was ecstatic, largely because they had agreed that if anyone wins, they would split the prize… you can see where this is going!
Tonda, who won $10 million, refused to split her money with her co-workers.
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She decided to take $375k a year over the course of 30 years, and began thinking about what steps she would next take in her life… and obviously, it goes without saying, she quit working at the Waffle House.
But her coworkers weren’t going to let her go that easily.
They opted to collectively take her to court for breaking her promise.
However, this was going to be tricky, as the court found that there was no official contract between anyone, it was more of a verbal agreement.
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In the state of Alabama, oral contracts cannot be enforced while gambling, meaning that Tonda walked away with all of her millions intact.
But she wasn’t off the hook yet, guess who else wanted a slice of the pie?
The man himself, Edward - the reason she struck big in the first place.
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He said in the past that if Waffle House employees ever won, they had to buy him a new pickup truck, but the judge threw it out before it even made it to trial.
Just days later, Tonda's ex-husband, Stacy Martin, allegedly attempted to kidnap her. Armed with a handgun, Stacy reportedly refused to let his ex-wife answer her ringing phone.
When he finally agreed, Tonda allegedly took his gun and shot him in the chest. Though, according to AL.com, no charges were pressed against anyone for incident.
But karma did eventually catch up with Tonda for failing to share her fortune as promised, as the IRS became aware of the situation due to the extensive media coverage.
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Tonda had attempted to create a small public company, cleverly named '9Mill'. This company was eventually looked into, and the IRS issued her a bill for not paying her federal gift tax.
In 2012, a court ruled that Tonda was to pay $1,119,347 in tax, but was able to keep the rest.