'I won £7m on EuroMillions – but then everything went horribly wrong'

In 2009, Luís Lopes was living what could be called a quiet, uneventful life. He worked as a tiler, and while the work wasn’t enough to make ends meet, he always managed to scrape by. He was content with his modest lifestyle, but there was one thing he held onto: his EuroMillions syndicate.

His life was predictable: wake up early, work hard, come home exhausted, and repeat. There were no luxuries, no extravagant vacations, just the routine struggle to make ends meet. But that all changed in 2009, when a EuroMillions ticket turned him into a multi-millionaire overnight.

For years, Luís, now 56, and a group of friends had chipped in to buy lottery tickets together, never truly believing they would win. It was more of a tradition than anything else. At best, they would pocket a few small wins and use the money to fund celebratory dinners. But one day, everything changed. They had hit the jackpot of over €50million (£41m), and his share was close to €8million (£6.7m).

For a man who had spent his entire life working hard with little to show for it, the win was overwhelming. He was no longer the tiler from Charneca da Caparica, a small parish in Portugal. He was a millionaire, suddenly thrust into a of luxury and excess. “I couldn’t believe it,” Luís recalls . “I didn’t sleep for 15 days. I just couldn’t. It was anxiety. Something like this changes your life completely.”

In the days following the win, Luís was swept up in the excitement. It wasn’t long before his life began to spiral into a whirlwind of indulgence. What started as a moment of joy quickly turned into a life of extravagance, as Luís tried to adjust to his new reality. He bought a new house in Charneca da Caparica, just a few kilometres from his old one. He traveled constantly, indulging in the lifestyle of the rich and famous, and spent lavishly on his friends and family.

READ MORE:

“I still worked for another two months, but then I quit. I bought houses for my nephews, gave money to my siblings, and traveled everywhere. Wherever Benfica went, I went too,” Luís says, reminiscing about the endless trips and the pleasures of his newfound wealth. It was a life of excess, but it wasn’t all happiness.

Soon after, Luís began to feel the darker side of his sudden fortune. People he had never met before began to approach him, claiming they knew him or had some connection to him. “I had people knocking at my door who I had never seen before. They would tell me they knew me, and my house was always full of people,” Luís says.

He bought a new house, but it didn’t bring the peace he had hoped for. Looking back, he regrets not moving further away from his old life. He admits: “Today I wouldn’t buy a house so close. I should have moved further away. It was too much. It became overwhelming.” His life was filled with noise, with people knocking on his door, calling him for favours and asking for money. He had never experienced anything like it before.

While the riches gave him the freedom to live a life of luxury, they also brought complications. His marriage ended in divorce, and his financial situation began to slip. The lavish lifestyle that had once seemed so exciting began to fade away, and Luís found himself struggling to hold onto what little he had left. The toll of his decisions became clear.

As Luís’s fortune dwindled, he turned to people he trusted to help manage his finances. One of those people was his lawyer, Sónia Valente. He reportedly met her through a friend, and they "got along well,” he explained, so he "gave her full control over my financial affairs. I thought she would take care of everything.”

For years, Sónia handled all of Luís’s legal and financial matters. He signed documents without reading them and handed over large sums of cash whenever she requested it. He alleges she would tell him he owed taxes or fines, and he would give her whatever she asked for. He : “Never less than €50,000, all in cash. I had never paid taxes in my life. I didn't know how things worked. I trusted her."

But in 2018, after nearly a decade of trusting Sónia blindly, Luís began to suspect something was wrong. A friend urged him to check his tax records, and what he discovered shocked him. The amounts he owed were far lower than what Sónia had claimed. Furious and feeling betrayed, Luís cut ties with Sónia and filed a complaint against her, accusing her of fraud and embezzlement. He claimed she had taken over €500,000 from him under false pretenses.

Sónia Valente, however, denies all accusations. In a statement to the same newspaper, she claimed Luís was simply trying to avoid paying his debts and was using her as a scapegoat. “I repudiate all of his accusations,” she said. “They are false and defamatory. Luís Lopes is responsible for his own financial ruin.”

She claims that Luís was difficult to work with, refusing to pay his bills and causing problems with the legal services she provided. According to Sónia, Luís’s financial difficulties were a result of his own poor choices, a lifestyle filled with “drugs, women, and a life of idleness and luxury as if money would never run out”.

“Luís has never been fond of paying his bills,” she claimed, adding that his financial ruin was caused by his own behaviour. Not only did Sónia reject Luís’s claims, but she also sued him for unpaid legal fees. The court ruled in her favour, and as a result, Luís’s assets were seized. His house in Charneca de Caparica was partially taken by the court, his bank accounts were frozen, and he was left scrambling to fight back.

As his financial troubles worsened, Luís expressed his desire to find peace, stating that he wanted to resolve everything so he and his current wife could move to and finally find tranquility. He continued: “When I worked, I was happier. I didn’t have these .”

After the wealth drained away and his life became chaotic, Luís reflects on a crucial moment when, after receiving his prize, the Department of Santa Casa Jogos offered him psychological support. “I was the one who said no. Today, I would’ve at least thought twice about it.”

Although the money is gone, his focus now is on the restaurant he managed to keep, some land in Alentejo, and the hope that someday he might win the lottery again - which he still plays, on Tuesdays and Fridays, one €2.5 ticket at a time.