He is the Lotto Lout who turned up to collect his £9.7million win wearing an electronic offender's tag.
But eight years on, Michael Carroll, the self-styled King of Chavs, is back to where he started - on the dole.
The 26-year-old former dustbin man yesterday revealed he has squandered his multi-million fortune on drugs, gambling and thousands of prostitutes.
But he insisted he is just as happy getting £42 a week in jobseeker's allowance.
He said: 'The party has ended and it's back to reality. I haven't got two pennies to rub together and that's the way I like it. I find it easier to live off £42 dole than a million.
'It's a bit strange going on the dole again because that's what I was doing before I won.
'I've lived the high life but I want my job back and to earn a normal wage. I'll do anything to earn a pound or two now.'
Carroll's jackpot win in 2002 disappeared with astonishing speed as the tattooed self-styled 'King of the Chavs' lavished several million pounds on family and friends and hundreds of thousands on drugs.
By the end of 2003, he was smoking £2,000 of crack cocaine every day and hosting drug and drink fuelled parties at his £325,000 home, the notorious Grange in Downham, Norfolk.
Angry at his life of excess, his wife Sandra left him and took their baby daughter Brooke with her.
Rather than see the decision as a wake-up call, Carroll continued on his life of excess, turning to prostitutes.
He boasted about sleeping with four a day - a total of 2,000 at a cost of £100,000 over eight years - in order to sate his sexual appetite.
Carroll told the News of the World: 'I could go for days without sleeping because of the drugs - so I would just spend night and day s****ing with all these hookers.'
Describing how he descended into a world of drugs and paying for sex, he continued: 'I only started to think about three things - drugs, sex and gold.
'The dealer who introduced me to crack has more of my lotto money than I do.
'He handed me my first bag of the stuff for free then he hiked up the price every time he came back. He knew what he was doing - but it blew my mind.'
He also spent a small fortune on his trademark chunky gold jewellery and a fleet of cars, including a black Mercedes van emblazoned with the phrase 'King of Chavs'.
Carroll said: I would buy these huge necklaces. One cost me around £2,000. All of it was robbed in 2004. There was about £100,000 worth of gold stolen. But the next day I went out and bought it all again.'
Repairs to properties he has wrecked with raucous parties have also cost him thousands and he reportedly lost an estimated £80,000 on a property deal in Dubai after the market fell.
Carroll also lost £1million on the dogs and horses and even injected £1million into his favourite football team, Rangers.
Carroll was down to his last £500,000 cash in 2008 and last year sold his £400,000 fleet of luxury cars and spent the proceeds.
He said he had no regrets about his lost fortune, but admitted that others had benefited from the win more than he had.
'I'm just glad it's over. There were also vultures everywhere after my cash. I started to see what people were really like.'
Carroll became notorious for his yobbish behaviour and answering any criticism with a one-fingered salute.
He arrived to collect his winnings wearing an electronic offender's tag, fitted after he was found drunk and disorderly and has appeared before the courts dozens of times for anti- social behaviour.
In 2004, Carroll was jailed for five months after failing to comply with a drug treatment order, imposed as part of a sentence for cocaine possession.
He was also handed an Asbo by magistrates in King's Lynn, Norfolk, for catapulting ball bearings at cars and windows from his Mercedes, causing thousands of pounds of damage.
Under its terms, he was not allowed to threaten, harass or intimidate anyone in the borough of West Norfolk, an area covering about 400 square miles.
The order also prevented him from threatening or attempting to cause criminal damage in the same area.
In 2008, thugs killed 12 of his dogs and ran him out of his lavish Downham, Norfolk, home and he has never returned.
Instead it stands vandalised and derelict with his pool filled with rubbish.
Carroll now lives in his other smaller home.
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