$50 million lottery winner tells story of big win, bad investment and court victory
Since winning a whopping $50 million on a lucky lotto max draw in 2015, former Lamont resident Randy Rush has not only had incredible highs in his life, but painful lows as well. His experiences are chronicled in a new book entitled ‘13 Billion to One’ coming out in June of 2020.
“There are some things in life you never forget,” said Rush. “And the feeling of seeing that I won $50 million is one of them.”
In Feb. 2015, Rush made a late-night run to the local Lamont Grocery store to get cat food for his Maine Coon ‘Conway Kitty’ when he saw a stack of old lottery tickets sitting on a table by the door.
“I saw the stack on my way out (of his house) and figured I’d better take them and check them while I was at the store,” he said. “You never know.”
Rush could not believe his eyes when he held the last ticket up to the manual ticket checker and $50,000,000 flashed across the screen.
“I took it away and held it up again. Finally, the clerk looked at me and asked if I was ok. I told her ‘I think I won!’” he said.
The clerk, whose name was changed to protect her privacy in his biography, ‘13 Billion to One’, confirmed his win on her machine. Then his life changed forever.
Rush began his new life with quitting his job, purchasing real estate, and making sure those he loved were well taken care of.
“I gave the store clerk who checked my ticket a cheque,” he said. “I’ve also travelled to Uganda to help build schools and made sure my mom was looked after.”
He also took care of his friends. Dave and Shirley Crawford had been going to the same church with Rush in Fort Saskatchewan for five years.
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“I knew they were struggling financially,” said Rush. “I had already been helping them out here and there over the years, so I bought a log cabin in B.C. and told them if they would like to move in and take care of the place, I would pay them $2,500 a month. They could live there rent free.” Rush added that the Crawfords accepted his offer.
He also included that not long after he cashed in his winning ticket, he received a phone call from Dave and Shirley’s son Jeremy.
“Jeremy spoke to me about his company KultID and told me it was developing a mobile app. The investment sounded very exciting,” said Rush. “Because these were people I knew and loved, I didn’t vet the situation like I should have. There was a lot of goodwill there.”
In spite of Rush promising himself he would not invest in anything for a year, the opportunity sounded too good to pass up.
Over the next several months, Rush said he funnelled more than $4.5 million to Crawford’s company.
“I was feeling a lot of red flags about the arrangement. There was a lot of excessive spending and he (Jeremy) was asking for more money,” he said.
“Jeremy seemed to have an answer for everything. Whenever I brought my concerns to Dave or Shirley, they would put their arms around me and say, ‘Jeremy is the last person you have to worry about. We raised him right.”
Rush added that once he got his own managers and accountants involved things began to unravel quickly.
“They found Jeremy had embezzled $1.5 million from the company within six months, among other things,” said Rush.
Read THE REST OF THE STORY in the full April 1 edition of The Lamont Leader – on newsstands now or read the digital version below:
Jana Semeniuk
