From mansions to living surrounded by drugs and own poo – lottery winner who lost it all

And when the big cheque came through, he began spending money like it was going out of fashion.

He bought a $1.6m, 6,000-square-foot mansion in a private gated community in Palm Beach, Florida, complete with tennis courts and a golf course. For some extra room, he also snapped up another $600,000 house nearby.

Next came a $1.9m Lear Jet, three losing racehorses, a $200,000 Lamborghini Diablo, and a $90,000 Dodge Viper. At one point he had so many expensive cars in his driveway (more than $1m worth), his neighbours complained it looked like a car lot.

Having paid his ex-wife $500,000 to get custody of his daughter Tiffani, 11, he bought her a $35,000 Hummer golf cart, despite the fact she was not old enough to drive it.

In his first three months as a millionaire, he spent $3million. One year after his win, he had spent $12million.

His press conference promises forgotten, he invited an NBC News TV crew into his home and bragged he was wearing a $78,000 diamond-encrusted gold watch, a $159,000 ring and proudly showed off his $30,000 plasma screen TV.

He also spent a lot of money on drugs. Reports say Edwards and Shawna blew a fortune on crack cocaine, prescription pills, and heroin. Between expensive and unsuccessful spells in rehab and countless run-ins with police, both contracted hepatitis from using dirty needles.

It was reported he was also generous in handing out drugs to friends, and when some died of overdoses, would also pay for their funerals. By 2006, within five short years, he had lost the lot.

He and Shawna were totally broke and moved into a squalid storage unit where they lived surrounded by their own poo, rotten food, crack pipes and syringes.

Shawna then left him and remarried and continued to be dogged by drug addiction, while daughter Tiffani, who had been enrolled in an expensive private academy, ended up working as a clerk at an amusement park in West Virginia.