Full-time mum Katie Smythe and partner Nicky Butler have three young children and with just £85 in the bank, were having a hard time making ends meet. 

Two years ago, a Lithuanian woman who has been living in Ireland considered herself lucky after winning €2,000 from the EuroMillions.  The same woman, who is now with child and in her last year of college, is set to take home an even more substantial €500,000 from the Euromillions draw this week.

How would you feel if you can suddenly afford to retire at the age of just 21?  We can perhaps ask a Puerto Rico native, and New York resident named Jeanette Pizzaro. 

On December 22, Spain’s Christmas Lottery will be drawn and €2.24 billion (that’s $3 billion) in prizes will be given away.

The ‘El Gordo de Navidad 2013’ will be composed of 160 series of 100,000 tickets each, with each full ticket costing €200 and each tenth share being sold at €20 each. 

In another case of dispute over lottery winnings, former partners Howard Browning and Lynn Anne Poirier have been to  an appeals court which in turn just asked the Florida Supreme Court for help in coming up with the proper ruling.

Just last spring, people were envious of an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who won a huge $338 million Powerball jackpot.  There was even more praise for winner Pedro Quezada, who promised to pay for the his neighbors’ rents. 

A textile industry worker won a 26 million NIS ( new Israeli shekel) jackpot, after he dreamed of having won a big lottery prize.  A week prior to his his big win, he had also correctly guessed a lottery combination that gave him a 1,000 NIS payout.

As if to prove that anybody can win, the list of winners for this week include a man who claims to play the lottery as a hobby, a woman who expected a turn in fortune after two years of bad luck, and someone who cannot be bothered to check his tickets so he will know he is a winner!

Remmele Mazyck, the former deputy director of security at the Arkansas Lottery commission who admitted in July to stealing more than $420,ooo in tickets and cashing them, has been sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to pay $482,000 in restitution.