Amanda Clayton, the Michigan woman who inspired mass derision and a fraud conviction for continuing to take public assistance after winning $1 million on a state lottery-run game show, has died. She was found dead yesterday, reports the Free Press, and a drug overdose is suspected. No further details on her death were available.
Clayton was earlier this year sentenced to nine months' probation and ordered to repay some $5,500 in food stamps after it was discovered she had failed to inform public assistance authorities of her September 2011 win. "I feel that it's OK because, I mean, I have no income, and I have bills to pay," she said at the time she was charged. "I have two houses." Michigan, apparently unconvinced, responded with a law requiring lotto officials to report winners to DHS. (More Amanda Clayton stories.)