Pennsylvania Lottery Winner Loses Big : Gambling: Brother is accused of trying to have him killed, his mortgage is past due and his income is tied up in a legal dispute with an ex-landlord who claims she shared the winning ticket.

Buddy Post’s trip down Easy Street has been as bumpy as the carnival rides he once operated for $150 a week. He won $16.2 million in the state lottery in 1988; now he’s broke.

It gets worse. Police have charged his brother with trying to have him killed in an attempt to collect on his future prize payments.

“Everybody dreams of winning money, but nobody realizes the nightmares that come out of the woodwork, or the problems,” Post said. “Before I hit the lottery, I was more content. I had no pressure. I didn’t have the worries. I had friends. I could go places and do things even though I didn’t have money.”

Now, the 53-year-old Post sits in his rundown mansion 90 miles north of Pittsburgh. His regular companions are a pack of cigarettes and a blotted-out tattoo on his arm.

A malfunctioning security system beeps in the background, reminding Post that smoke detectors, like light fixtures and drapes, have been ripped from the walls and ceilings. Post said he sold some of those things for cash. He believes others were stolen.

Most of the furniture is gone. The lawn mower is missing, and weeds and grass in the front yard tickle visitors’ kneecaps. The back yard swimming pool is filled with sand and brush.

It’s a dump, but Post said he can’t do anything about it because he has no cash. If something doesn’t change soon, the bank will own the dump. His mortgage is past due.

His 50-year-old brother, Jeffrey, was arrested last month in Sarasota, Fla., and charged with plotting to kill Post and his sixth wife, Constance. A police informant told investigators he was hired by the brother to make the job look like a murder-suicide.

Weeks before, Post eliminated Jeffrey, another brother, Edward, and a sister, Patricia, as beneficiaries of his payments, which run for 20 more years. He listed Constance alone on a document filed with the Pennsylvania Lottery Commission.

If he and Constance died, the annual checks of $497,000 after taxes would revert to his estate. Post said he now plans to cut his siblings out of his will.

Some of his relatives said Post’s problems were his own doing. They said he spent unwisely and auctioned off personal property when he ran short of cash.

“I always told my husband, ‘You watch, Buddy gets that check in February and by June or July he’ll be broke.’ And he always was,” said Sally Post, who is married to Post’s brother Edward.

Buddy Post said he had provided capital for businesses started jointly with his siblings, including a bar and a used car lot. They failed.

Last year a judge ordered Post to give a third of the winnings, about $5.3 million, to his former landlord, Ann Karpik. Karpik sued after the winning ticket was validated, saying she shared it with Post.

He is appealing the ruling, but this year’s check went into escrow, as will other checks until the case is resolved.

But Post is accustomed to having money out of reach. His mother died when he was 8, and his father couldn’t care for the four siblings.

At 15, Post ran away from an orphanage and tried a variety of jobs, finally heading to Florida, where he ran a ride in a carnival and cooked and drove a tractor-trailer for a circus.

When that grew old, he headed back to his hometown, Erie, and soon noticed a growing jackpot in the Super 7 lottery game.

The first time he played, he didn’t win. The next week, on Feb. 24, 1988, he bought $40 worth of tickets and was one of two winners who split a $32.4 million jackpot.

Post expects to wind up with nothing.