A 63-year-old man from Detroit spent his life savings and retirement money on PowerBall tickets. The $450,00 spent yielded a return of $37,500.
Charles Tullman was certain he would win the $1.5 billion jackpot if he bought enough tickets. The closest he came was three right numbers and the PowerBall number that made him $18,520.
“I don’t know what got into me,” Tullman told the Detroit Free Press. “I thought it was a lock for me to win the billion and a half dollars. I really did believe I would win. It’s hard to explain to people the confidence and vision I had of winning.”
How can someone gamble his entire life savings on 200,000 number combinations? Tullman said he had worked out the math, so his chances of winning were 100%. “I went over and over it again. I had to win. In retrospect, I was just hooked on the idea of winning the PowerBall.”
Tullman went to his local Bank of America branch and withdrew $448,585 from his savings account. “When it’s all in hundreds, the money doesn’t take up much room. I brought ten duffle bags but only needed one of them.”
He then started his journey to purchase 224,292 tickets. Concerned of being robbed in Detroit, he went to 45 different convenient stores to buy his tickets in bulk but with $10,000 at a time.
On Wednesday night, he patiently waited for the lottery numbers to be drawn. The next 12 hours of reading numbers were the most nerve racking minutes of his life. He separated any ticket with a 10 PowerBall number to save time. “I started checking the tickets at eleven thirty at night and by next evening, all my savings and retirement money was gone.
“My house will probably go into foreclosure, and my dear, dear wife Susan will likely divorce me. My life is ruined; my life is over.”
Charles wife, Susan Tullman, is in complete shock knowing they lost everything. Susan told the paper, “He told me on Monday what he did. I tried to get refunds on the tickets, but they wouldn’t let me. How can the state let someone spend almost half a million dollars on lottery tickets? He obviously had a problem and they knowingly let him do it. And the lady on the phone was very rude to me about it.”
While $450,000 is a lot of money, the Tullmans feared it would not be enough to retire on and Charles back and hip issues were leading him to an early retirement. “This was going to set us up for the rest of our lives,” said Charles. “And our children and children’s children lives. I could see it so clearly. Instead, I lost over four hundred thousand dollars in one day.
“I’m still taking it all in. It was such a high a few hours ago. It’s going to take a little bit of time to let it all process. It’s going to be a long week, month, year, decade, if I make it that long.”
His neighbors are watching over Charles to make sure he doesn’t try to hurt himself when the shock finally kicks in.
