If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you do? Quit your job? Buy a new house? Car? Yacht, even? Sure. One thing you probably wouldn’t think to do is get your genitals gold plated. But that’s precisely what a Georgia lottery winner did recently. And ended up paying the ultimate price for it…
38-year-old Atlanta resident Justin Green grew up in abject poverty. He’d always had to live hand to mouth, but saw his hopes and dreams come true last year when he scooped $98 million on the Georgia state lottery.
Green immediately quit his job stacking shelves at Walmart and put in place plans for what he kept calling his ‘better life’. But it seemed that his idea of a better life wasn’t the same as most people’s…
As a younger man, Green was, according to friends, completely obsessed with the 2002 movie comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember where Mike Myers‘ character hunts down a criminal mastermind who colors his victims ‘testicles in gold. And the idea stuck for some reason.
According to co-workers, Green went on an elaborate shopping spree after the win which included him buying huge gold and diamond chains, imported foreign cars, custom gold ‘grills’ for his teeth and the gold plated genitals that ultimately led to his untimely death
Green approached people in the gold plating/gilding business, however due to the very dangerous nature of the procedure, he was turned down repeatedly. Even a Tijuana doctor and former jeweler who had been struck off refused.
So he decided to improvise and do it himself. He tried painting his penis and testicles with lead-based paint, but decided that just coloring himself wasn’t enough – he wanted actual gold. So Green bought a used professional automotive gold plater from a garage and set to work…
Unfortunately, just twelve hours after the procedure, Green experienced a series of health issues that ultimately led to his hospitalization and death.
According to the man who treated him, Dr. Bill Rife from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Green’s official cause of death was ‘mercury and lead poisoning’ (two common elements found in gold).
“The human body just is not made to handle being gold plated. I don’t care how much money you have, money cannot buy common sense and money cannot help you cheat death.”
Green had no surviving relatives and had recently written a will leaving his vast fortune to a local raccoon charity.
