Margaret Loughrey broke NI records when she hit the Euromillions jackpot while claiming benefits.
The Strabane woman, who died aged just in her late 50s today, said after she scooped the £27m that she had been to the job market that morning to get an application for a charity post.
She was taking home just £58 a week at the time while she searched for a job.
But her life changed forever when she matched five numbers and two lucky stars in the November 2013 draw and became one of Ireland's richest people over night.
She told the BBC then: "No point having £27m and being lonely. That can’t make me happy, that can only make me happy that everybody else’s happy and so far everybody is absolutely delighted."
Eight years on, Margaret has been found dead in a home where she is understood to have lived alone in the town she said she would never leave. Police said they are not treating her death as suspicious but a post mortem is planned to ascertain the cause.
In 2014 Margaret said she planned to give away most of her fortune, keeping just £1million for herself, and just a year after her win had handed out half of it.
She said at the time: "I know what it's like to have nothing. That's why I'm giving it away – I can't miss what I never had. I spent half of my adult life unemployed and the other half on the minimum wage so I know only too well how hard things can be."
Margaret hoped to benefit her home town with her win and within just months of scooping the lottery had set up a series of firms with that view in mind. She also paid £1million for the iconic Herdman's Hill in Sion Mills which she planned to transform it into a major leisure and tourism site, creating scores of job opportunities.
A row with Sion Mills Cricket Club, founded by the Herdman family in 1864, erupted the same year after they were locked out of their pitch on the 60-acre grounds. It meant they had to forfeit two matches for the first time in their 150 years but a deal was reached to allow them to use it again.
To this day Herdman's Mill stands largely untouched aside from a series of arson attacks down through the years.
Margaret also saw her fair share of trouble.
She was ordered to do 150 hours of community service in 2015 after being convicted of assaulting a taxi driver. She also admitted causing criminal damage to the taxi driver’s glasses and to his satellite navigation system during the incident outside her home on May 14.
Deputy District Judge Sean O’Hare also ordered her to pay restitution of £559 for the damage she caused to the taxi driver’s glasses and also ordered her to pay the driver compensation of £200. Margaret had no previous criminal convictions.
Then in 2018 her former PA took her to industrial tribunal, saying she fired him on a "vindictive whim". Margaret was ordered to pay him £30,000 for injury to feelings and her appeal against the decision failed.
IN 2019, Ms Loughrey said her lottery win "sent her to hell and back"
"Money has brought me nothing but grief. It has destroyed my life,” she told the Sunday Life.
"I have had six years of this. I don’t believe in religion, but if there is a hell, I have been in it. It has been that bad. I went down to five-and-a-half stone."
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