Ex Of Powerball Winner Gets Costly Lesson After Split

Everyone dreams about winning the lottery. For many, it would be a means of not having to worry about finances for the rest of their lives. Others dream of helping their family and friends find a better life, while others use up every cent to buy everything they ever dreamed of.

But some don’t see a cent of their winnings. Either debt catches up with them, or they encounter other problems like taxes or people coming back to them for their money. Here, we share the story of Lamar McDow, the man who had taken everything his Powerball winner girlfriend, Marie Holmes, had given him for granted.

A Life Of Struggle

Lamar McDow’s life was far from easy, being born and raised in the worst neighborhoods of Statesville, North Carolina. Like any impoverished community, there was a myriad of challenges and harsh realities that affect the daily lives of its residents, and it’s no different for McDow.

Despite North Carolina’s reputation for its picturesque landscapes and vibrant cities, it’s not immune to the presence of poverty and the consequent formation of impoverished neighborhoods, which particularly shaped Lamar’s upbringing.

Crossing Fates

However, amidst the adversities that marked Lamar’s life, an unexpected beginning of a romance started when he crossed paths with a certain Marie Holmes in 2012. Lamar’s intentions may have been initially good, maybe still unaware of the person he would ultimately become in the future.

Or maybe he had already known what kind of person he was going to be. When all you have known is hardships, poverty, and crime, it might have already molded him in a way that left little room to deviate away from such a dark path.

Criminal Life

Aside from the crime involved in Lamar’s life, Marie shared the same hardships and trials as he did. But despite the similarity between their life experiences, the resulting character, values, and perspectives in life of the two were completely different.

Lamar was angry at the world, which explained his constant life of criminality and dangerous way of living, while Marie was still hopeful for the future and working earnestly to earn a living.

Opposites Of Each Other

Because of the life he was brought up in, Lamar was influenced by the environment that nurtured a mindset and lifestyle filled with criminal activities. He was also a member of the local gang in North Carolina and would constantly be at odds with the law.

On the other hand, Marie embraced motherhood and the heavy responsibilities that came with it. She was a young single mother with two children to care for. Together with her mother, Fontella Holmes, she lived in a modular home in Shallotte, N.C.

Unbothered By The Other’s Past

Fate brought Lamar and Marie into an unlikely encounter in North Carolina. At that time, Marie was working two jobs, one at a local McDonald’s and the other at Walmart. She was diligently striving to make ends meet to provide for her family.

Despite the differences, Lamar’s troubled past, and Marie’s own share of life’s burden, nothing else bothered their connection and they soon started dating. In the face of their respective struggles, Lamar and Marie embraced the journey ahead of them.

Taking Charge

With his budding relationship with his girlfriend Marie, Lamar became the father figure to her children after he moved in with her in her mobile home in Shallotte.

One would think that by this time, Lamar would have changed for the better and left behind his criminal ways, especially since welcoming his own child with his girlfriend to the world. But unfortunately, that isn’t the case in this story.

An Unfaithful Man

Despite already being in a committed relationship with Marie, Lamar found himself unable to resist the allure of other women and his eyes would involuntarily wander.

It was a struggle within him, an internal conflict between loyalty and temptation that constantly tested the boundaries of his commitment to his girlfriend. But it was a battle he eventually lost.

Living A Lie

If Marie knew about his infidelity, she would certainly be heartbroken and devastated. And so he kept it to himself for as long as he could. After all, no man would want to be caught cheating.

As if making up for his secret affairs, he played the role of a faithful lover to Marie to keep his girlfriend happy. He also provided for her children who weren’t even biologically his like a dedicated father. Or at least that was what he was making it out to be.

Catching Up

Despite his so-called efforts, the shadow of his criminal life still loomed near. It was as fate would have it, Lamar and Marie’s journey would be fraught with deception and turmoil underneath the happiness he was trying to front.

Two years after meeting Marie and who knows how long he was fooling around behind her back, Lamar’s crimes finally caught up to him. It wasn’t a surprise either as it was bound to happen sooner or later. No man can escape justice, or at least not Lamar.

His First Arrest

In November 2014, Lamar was apprehended and arrested by the police of the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office on the charge of dangerous substance trafficking.

Not only that, he already had prior cases including trafficking other dangerous substances and assault on a woman. It seemed like things weren’t looking good for Lamar, but Marie was by his side through it all even through the gossip their neighbors whispered about them.

Loving A Criminal

Lamar did not deserve someone dedicated and loyal like Marie by his side. He wasn’t even deserving of her love. But despite all the charges against him, Marie still stood by him. Love it blind, after all.

But whether Lamar truly loved her back, no one could really be sure. Because if you truly love someone, how could you betray them by cheating on them behind their back? How could you fool them and act intimate with someone else?

A Millionaire’s Lover

Indeed, Lamar did not deserve her, but he was going to take advantage of it for as long as he could. So, when his girlfriend became the largest jackpot winner of the Powerball lottery two months after his arrest, it wasn’t only her who struck lucky.

Lamar rode on his girlfriend’s luck when one of the first things Marie did was bail him out of jail with $3 million a week after her lottery win. It seemed that as long as he had Marie, he didn’t even need to be afraid of the law anymore.

The Powerball Jackpot

After Lamar got out of prison, Lamar read in the newspaper about Marie’s win weeks after receiving the lump sum of her winnings. And he was extremely astonished when he finally found out the total amount his girlfriend had won. It was a whopping $188 million!

Marie was among the three winners of the $564 million jackpot, and each winner split the prize evenly. According to Marie, she had been fixing their children’s breakfast when she saw the winning numbers 11, 13, 25, 39, and 54 on Facebook.

Before The Win

Marie rarely played the lotto, only when she had some cash to spare. She had given her mother the money to buy the lotto ticket at their local gas station before she went to church. There wasn’t any lotto strategy involved when her mother picked out the numbers. But it had a special meaning behind it.

Fontella Holmes had been dreaming of her third child, Marie’s brother, who would have been 25 at the time of the lotto win. His birthday was also part of the winning numbers. But of course, this was something that Marie didn’t know at that time.

After The Win

When Marie realized she had won that day, she ran outside and literally screamed. Shallotte was a small town with only a population of 4,000 people. It didn’t take long before everyone knew about the big news of her amazing luck.

Marie’s $188 million was roughly halved after taxes and picking a lump-sum payment, approximately only taking home $89 million. While it was much lower than how much it initially was, it was still a huge milestone and a sign that everything is going to change—but that didn’t necessarily mean for the better.

Not A Dream

Fontella wouldn’t have it any other way when she saw her daughter rejoice. She thought Marie deserved it more than she did. After all, it was only recently when Marie was forced to quit her two jobs to personally take care of her son who had cerebral palsy.

So the fact that she had won the biggest prize in the Powerball lottery didn’t feel real. She even thought she was dreaming at one point because everything felt like a dream. She felt like crying. The unexpected luck may have come as a surprise, but more surprises were yet in store for her.

A New Home

Of course, Lamar was one of the people who benefitted the most from Marie’s Powerball lottery win. After his release, the new home he went back to was no longer the once small mobile home he had been living in before his arrest.

What Lamar would call his home from then on was a lavish $350,000 house situated in their hometown, which Marie had bought with her lottery winnings. It was an eye-catching white estate with a large yard accommodating brand-new cars.

New Neighbors

But despite the better neighborhood, the neighbors were completely skeptical about them. Lamar even discovered that they had planted a security camera to follow their movements. While this angered Lamar, who could possibly blame them?

After all, Lamar’s own criminal history had left a lingering shadow of doubt in their minds that it was only natural to view their new neighbors with suspicious eyes. It wasn’t wrong to want to feel safe in your own home.

Living On The Edge

Lamar thought so little of their neighbor’s scrutiny that he even threw a party with illegal substances involved inside his and Marie’s new home. Expectedly, someone tipped the police. Their estate was raided and the police found what they were looking for.

While Lamar and Marie were charged with possession of illegal substances, it wasn’t something that Marie couldn’t take care of quickly. She was so besotted with her boyfriend that she didn’t even care about anything else but making it easy for him.

Sugar Mommy

Marie’s affection for him apparently knew no bounds, as she generously shared her good fortune with Lamar without even thinking twice about it. While many people criticized her for how she was spending her money, Marie didn’t care one bit.

All she cared about was making Lamar happy and he undoubtedly was—overjoyed even! Who wouldn’t be when you come out of prison only to return to a life of luxury and a faithful woman? He wanted to pick her up, spin her around and kiss her a million times.

Extravagant Gifts

Marie persisted in buying extravagant gifts for her boyfriend, one of the most costly being the modified Chevrolet Stingray. It didn’t stop there either—that was only the beginning of it.

Marie also showered Lamar with $100,000 worth of clothes and jewelry, notably the $15,000 diamond-encrusted gold Rolex watch. More than that, she also gave him a thriving $600,000 auto-repair business. Her gifts all seemed endless.

Arrested Again

But after months of luxury together, he found himself winding up in jail again. Prior to his first release, the police had strapped a GPS tracker on him to monitor his movements. But it was less than a year later, sometime in July, when he was arrested for the second time for violating the curfew terms of his release and illegal possession of a firearm.

Lamar had completely turned fearless of the law after all the lengths his rich girlfriend would go to for him that he had completely forgotten about the tracker and the consequences of violating the terms of his bail. He knew she always had his back.

Wasted Money

To bail him out, Marie used $6 million and slumped up a further $12 million on New Year’s Day when Lamar was arrested again over allegedly conspiring to arrange an illegal street race just last December.

Marie was even set to lose a quarter of her winnings, a staggering $21 million, if she also didn’t turn up to his trial. Marie had been paying an estimated $600,000 on bail bondsmen to post Lamar’s bonds.

Loved Ones

Amidst Lamar’s continued way of living on the edge, there were people criticizing them for how Marie was spending her money but she didn’t really see anything wrong with doing these kinds of things for your loved ones.

“We are a couple, this is what people do for each other. She has the money and she can do what she wants to do with it,” Lamar spoke out after all the judgment. “If I had the money then I would do the same for her. People are just jealous because of how much she won and people want to see me locked up in jail.”

Love Affairs

Sometime around the troubled year of 2015, Lamar had even managed to put a ring on Marie, who thought that as long as they had love, there was nothing to be worried about. While they weren’t married yet, it showed how much Marie was willing to turn a blind eye to all the things Lamar did—even the affairs he did behind her back.

Apparently, it wasn’t only Lamar’s encounters against the law that Marie had to deal with. She also had to deal with his love affairs. According to a Facebook video that also spewed profane statements about Marie, her fiancé had allegedly been paying neighborhood women to perform intimate acts using her money.

Someone Else

Instead of confronting Lamar, she confronted the woman instead. Before the lottery win, Marie might not have had money, but at least she was an earnest and commendable woman. Her love for Lamar had turned her into someone she didn’t recognize anymore.

There had been a lot of people offering their advice to her but had all initially fallen on deaf ears. But now, Marie was starting to waver. Money had brought more troubles than relief.

Stirring Awake

Things weren’t looking good for Lamar as he was completely unaware of the beginning of Marie’s revelations. With his girlfriend always helping him out of sticky situations, he had become so assured that she would always be there at his every whim.

The audacity of this man was astoundingly large. It never even crossed his mind that one day, she would suddenly wake up and see him for what he truly was—a good-for-nothing cheater who leached on her wealth. She had almost forgotten who was actually there for her through it all, her mother.

It Must Come To An End

What Lamar now was a far cry from when he was roaming the streets of North Carolina as a local gangster, a time when he had zero income and only had $120 of assets.

After all the luxuries Marie had showered him with, it had also blinded Lamar for the worst, as if he wasn’t already bad enough. But soon, everything he had taken for granted would disappear.

Breaking Free

In January 2016, he prepared to spend 7 years in prison after his conviction in 2014. He had left his possessions, the ones Marie had given him, in hopes he would go out sooner than the judge had ordered. During this time, Marie had given birth to their second child together, but she had started to become distant.

Their contact became less and less frequent, and eventually, their relationship came to an end in 2017. Lamar thought that this was only a phase and that things would eventually pass. But he would later find out that Marie had already moved on and that she was already seeing someone else.

A Feeling Of Betrayal

The aftermath of their separation plunged Lamar into a world of shock and disbelief. While incarcerated, he had also discovered that Marie had also allegedly disposed of his clothes, sold his properties, and even closed down his auto-restoration business, all without his knowledge or consent.

He felt deceived, so angered that he filed a federal lawsuit against Marie, demanding compensation for the assets he claimed were rightfully his, including more than $25,000 in punitive damages. He didn’t want her to have a happy life—especially not without him.

Nothing To His Name

However, Lamar’s missteps loomed so large he couldn’t escape them. Despite his accusations, none of the properties Marie gave him, which he claimed were his, were even titled to his name. Not his cars, not his business, and not even his jewelry. It had always been in Marie’s name. He never legally owned anything.

After Marie moved to Washington state, it complicated the legal proceedings. In addition, there were also numerous deficiencies in his complaint. First, Marie was never properly served with the lawsuit. Secondly, the lawsuit was filed outside the three-year statute of limitation, which expired last year.

Dead End

It was already obvious that there wasn’t any point in his lawsuit anymore. Lamar was only making a fool of himself. It seemed like, despite being so generous and giving him everything he needed and wanted, Marie was one step ahead of him all this time.

Without Marie’s help, Lamar serves his jail time completely and will be released this 2023, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. As he sits behind bars, surely it would be enough time to think about the times he had taken her for granted and all the things he could’ve done differently.