YORK, Pa. — A Pennsylvania man mistakenly threw $1.25 million worth of winning lottery tickets in the trash.
The guy, it goes without saying, was pretty upset.
"Wouldn't you be," said Wendy Hinton, who works at Zhou Grocery on South Queen Street in York.
On March 13, 2013, she sold 25 Quinto tickets — numbers 4-3-4-1-8 — to one of her regular customers, a man who, at the time, lived a couple of blocks from the corner store. She remembered because he played the same numbers every day — their significance, not known — and always bought a bunch of tickets with the same numbers — sometimes 20, other times 25 — among his daily lottery purchases that totaled about $100 a day.
Shortly after the drawing, she said, the man checked the numbers, but must have misread them and threw the tickets in the trash.
The 25 tickets were worth $50,000 each — $1.25 million total.
"He was mad," Hinton said of the day he found out that he threw away more than a million dollars. "He was so mad he played $400 that day."
It had been a mystery what happened to the tickets. The Pennsylvania Lottery put out a news release back in February, warning whoever held the tickets that they had until March 13 to cash them in, figuring that the person may have tucked them away in a kitchen junk drawer or had them in a wallet or pocketbook and hadn't bothered to check them.
The truth was slightly different.
"Oh, no," lottery spokeswoman Lauren Bottaro said. "Wow."
Bottaro said the lottery hates for tickets to go unclaimed and said this instance emphasizes the importance of players checking their tickets.
The $1.25 million jackpot will now remain in the state Lottery Fund.
Lottery players are usually pretty diligent about checking their tickets. Bottaro said Unclaimed tickets are very rare, composing maybe 1 percent of the number of tickets sold in the state.
"We do what we can" to notify winners, Bottaro said. "But sometimes, it's just not enough."
Dumb...
I have the hardest time, trying to understand people who go out of their way to buy lottery tickets and not check them. I have seen where the numbers have been posted on the television or computer sites wrong or late, but the numbers are soon corrected.
Hold on to your tickets for at the least, a couple of days and RECHECK THEM!!!
$100 in 1 day on tickets.......$400 in 1 day...... dont you have bills to pay ? lol
Poor guy. That's so unfortunate. No need to dance on this guy's grave.
Hmmm...I wonder if he checked the tickets with one of those ticket scanners, and it said, "Sorry, not a winner..." Those things have been known to give false negatives.
Just goes to show, always KNOW your numbers, and check and re-check if you are even close to dealing with a large amount.
Funny the clerk knew the numbers all this time but never clicked tell him?
He must have been so use to losing that he felt when his numbers came up, that just couldn't be right.
Speechless. I feel sorry for that guy.
What a shame to read this story. A lesson for all of us.
Ding Cuckoo,
Eastern PA LOL
what did he say? I couldn't understand it.
Yup, my worst fear. A nightmare.
You really cannot feel sorry for a man who doesn't check his tickets. Miss Fortune sure knows who to pay a visit to.
PA Lottery Quinto Evening Winning Lottery Numbers!
Evening Drawing
03/13/13
Winning Numbers: 4 3 4 1 8
$1 Straight bet pays $50,000.00
$1 Boxed bet pays $850.00
25 winners of $50,000
64 winners for a total of $1,277,300.00
I would have a hard time looking at myself in the mirror if I basically threw away that much money.
"He was so mad he played $400 that day." GOOD LORD!! like luck was gonna automatically shine his way again LMFAO.
That's a shame. Said in a sacrastic manner.
Too bad they can't use video evidence since those terminal tickets should be date/time stamped.
Why bother. He's a moron who does'nt deserve to win. Should of recognized those numbers right away.
State lotteries should offer a registration system, as state lotteries in Australia do!
" I wonder if he checked the tickets with one of those ticket scanners, and it said, "Sorry, not a winner..." Those things have been known to give false negatives".
That's pretty tough especially when one is counting on those scanners to be correct. l read an article back in 2011 where a woman from NJ sued a TV station for $75,000 for publishing wrong lottery numbers..
l wonder if the lottery Post has ever posted wrong numbers or is there a mechanism in place to avoid such mishaps?
I don't live anywhere near Eastern PA
Never will
That's terrible. I play 12345, 86753, 75309, 01020 and 10200. I will be sure to claim by $150,000 when one each one hits.
Time to visit the the local garbage dump.
You know, this is actually a feel good story. From now on, when I get ticked off for having a bunch of losing tickets, I can always say "it could be worse, at least I wasn't the guy who threw away $1.25 million dollars". Then I'll feel all better again
I am happy that the very few times that we have forgotten about a ticket and it has expired, it has not been a winner. My husband does NOT want to know if it had been, but I have a morbid curiosity about them, and have always checked. Thankfully, none of them have been winners.
Yes, I would feel bad that we let it expire, but at least I would know that lightning did strike. Considering that I am from Colorado, and we have only had ONE powerball winner, and none from the megamillions.
It would have been a little too late. He most likely threw it away in March, 2013 but the media wasn't alerted until this year.
I still can't fathom someone being that stupid especially with a number that he played religiously so I'm guessing that he may have scanned the tickets and it came back as a non-winner.
Final exit?
What you talkin bout, Baller?
This is what gets me:
Shortly after the drawing, she said, the man checked the numbers, but must have misread them and threw the tickets in the trash.
So where and how did he check the numbers? This implies he was in the store "shortly after the drawing" where the clerk observed his actions. So was he reading the results off the store monitor? Do they show that in PA? Did he ask the clerk for a Jackpot report printout? Did he scan with a self check scanner, if available? Did he check with his smartphone web browser?(probably not, why hang around in the store if you're mobile...)
I always try to keep an open mind and think of all the options, never just the narrow view. What made him discard the tickets? Were the results reported incorrectly immediately after the draw, but subsequently corrected a few minutes/hours later? Either in the display or in the system or on the web? If so, would that have been announced? Large amounts get published, but that is way too late to recover discarded tickets.
Another reason to always keep your tickets and NOT throw them away, if anything for tax purposes and budgeting.(I keep and document all my tickets)
Thank you Jon D for restoring my faith . So few have open minds when it comes to the possibilities of what may have transpired. And I do feel sorrow for the man. I live in the area and folks here can use a financial boost. I've no bad vibes to lend to this post. Most of our machines that have the self check are "offline" and it can be frustrating to wait in lines here. the cashier waits on paying customers before lottery customers. Their response is mostly, we don't make enough off the lottery compared to customers who come in to buy stock items. My philosphy is, a customer is a customer. value them.
I have no sympathy for irresponsible behavior. Darwin award eligible.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This happened in March of 2013. Why did it take so long for this story to get out?
God bless the guy this happened to.
Because the lottery tickets in PA expires exactly one year after the drawing. So up to March 13, 2014 anybody who found the tickets would have walked in and claimed that baby.
The lottery was looking for the lost lottery ticket. LOL
Your chances of winning a MM or PB jackpot are better than finding this lost lottery ticket.
His mind was too focused on the intangible lottery jackpot.
OUCH!!! Well he will be mad at himself for a long time!!! People really need to check, double, triple, and quadruple check their tickets.