He added, “I’m not going to blow the money.”But the good news came at a bad time. Hayes’ family and relationship problems had been weighing on him. “Right before he won, he was dealing with depression and some pretty severe problems,” said Stephen Demik, a criminal defense attorney who represented Hayes on the robbery case. “But when you win $19 million, your first stop isn’t going to be a psychologist— it’s going to be a new car lot.
“Because of his cars, he met celebrities like Mario Andretti, who picked one of his Lamborghinis—I would say the color was nail-polish pink—to drive at the Running of the Bulls,” Parker said, referencing a luxury sports car event that drew wealthy and famous participants. “He had a lot of toys and was in that crowd.”
Worse, it seemed like he was using the cash to fill an emotional void. “He didn’t really get to have a childhood, so winning the lottery made him act like a kid in candy store,” she said.The flip side of being wealthy is crazy. You think, ‘Do my friends like me, or just my cars, money, and the help I give them?'He also gave away too much dough to pals, who sometimes showed up “out of the woodwork” asking for loans or handouts, according to Wysinger-Hayes.
The California Lottery soon began withholding some of his annual lottery payments to offset the money he owed. He also ran into trouble with the IRS and, by 2015, “We couldn’t touch the lottery money,” Wysinger-Hayes said. Hayes applied for 38 jobs—but got nowhere with a bad back and a dated resume, according to court papers. He said interviews went like this: “Can you pick up 50 pounds? All day? Have you ever run a cash register? No? What have you been doing the last 19 years? You won what?!?”
Eventually, he went looking for a remedy. “I turned to street drugs,” he said. “The first time I tried heroin, I dissolved it into water and sniffed it. It took away my back pain and pill sickness for 48 hours. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s the answer!’”Hayes was listening to '80s metal music with his 10-pound Maine Coon cat, Dr. Pepper, when the idea struck to rob a bank. “I mentally snapped,” he said.
As his crime spree unfolded, Hayes read everything from true crime thrillers to internet threads for tips on how to pull off a low-risk heist. He generally struck at around 5 p.m. as cops changed shifts. He disguised his body type and sprayed his fingers with liquid bandages to avoid leaving prints. And he never brought a gun, which would increase his prison time if he got caught. But most importantly, he had to be gone in three minutes or less.
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