A woman in Virginia received the wrong lotto ticket but ended up winning millions. Talk about a happy accident.
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When Kelly Lindsay went in to buy her lotto ticket, she was rather put out to find that she had been given the wrong scratch-off. Rather than the ticket she asked for, the cashier had given her the Money Blitz ticket. Not one to argue with fate, Lindsay scratched the lotto ticket in the parking lot.
As the numbers and symbols revealed themselves, it dawned on her. She had hit the jackpot and ended up with the top prize of $2 million. The mistake made by the clerk had resulted in a fantastic turn of events. According to the lottery, "The chances of winning the top prize are 1 in 1,142,400. The chances of winning any prize in this game are 1 in 3.29."
She had struck gold. She rushed back in to claim her prize. With a winning lotto ticket in hand, she was given two options. The first was to take her full $2 million in tax-free payments over 30 years or get the whole thing at once. she opted for the former.
However, this would only come to $1.25 million pre-tax. After tax, this would come to around $950,000 which is no small sum. For a simple clerical error, this mistake could have gone a lot worse.
Still More To Be Won With Lotto Ticket
So far, for this particular scratchy, there is still one more top prize to be won. Lindsay marks the second person to claim, leaving one remaining. If you fancy your luck, you may want to go grab one.
It isn't just the scratch card winners that benefit from the lotto ticket either. The Virginia Lottery has spoken about how much they give back to the county. A significant amount of the money made from the sales goes towards things like education and community services.
"In Fiscal Year 2024, the Lottery raised more than $934 million for K-12 education, making up approximately 10 percent of Virginia's total K-12 school budget," they revealed. So, although buying lotto tickets might be considered an idiot tax, at least the lost money goes to education.
