Incredibly lucky win might convince casual lottery player to play a bit more
By Kate Northrop
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California man reinvested his $500 lottery win back into a full book of scratch-off tickets and spent an entire day at work before he discovered one of the tickets in the booklet was worth $1 million.
Vang Cha told the California Lottery he doesn't buy scratch-off tickets very often, but his most recent win might have officially gotten him hooked.
Normally, Cha prefers trying his luck with the lottery when draw game jackpots grow huge, such as the current $1.55 billion estimated for Mega Millions. On any day, he would rather play the California Lottery's SuperLotto Plus game than buy scratch-off tickets.
But this player decided to do a bit of investigating. He hopped on the Lottery's website to check out the odds of the $30 "California 200X" scratch-off game, which offers a top prize of $10 million.
"I looked at the odds of winning and found it's better odds than SuperLotto Plus, so I figured I might as well give it a shot," he explained.
Hoping to beat those odds to scoop up one of the game's $10 million top prizes, he purchased a "California 200X" ticket.
Although it wasn't what he had originally hoped for, he ended up walking away with a very decent $500 prize. However, it wasn't enough to satisfy this player, who was on the hunt for something with a few more zeroes.
Cha took the $500 he won and bought an entire book of the $10 "Xtreme Multiplier" scratch-off game — 30 tickets in total — at Mike's Liquors on South Land Park Drive in Sacramento.
"I decided to just go all in and buy an entire book of the ten-dollar games," he told the Lottery. "I went to work and scratched probably about 20 of them, went home and scratched the rest."
Cha spent the entire day at work blissfully unaware that hiding among the rest of the unscratched tickets was one worth $1 million. On the final row of the winning ticket, lucky number 16 sat waiting to be uncovered.
"I was stunned!" Cha said, recalling the moment he won. "I scanned it on the Lottery app to make sure it was true, and it was."
It looks as though this winner got the zeroes he was looking for after all. With the winnings, he said he plans to invest, and perhaps he'll take a note out of his own book and play scratch-off games a little more often now.
Following Cha's win, there are seven out of 14 top prizes of $1 million remaining in the $10 "Xtreme Multiplier" game. There are also 17 out of 29 second-tier prizes of $20,000 and 12 out of 29 third-tier prizes of $10,000 left to claim. The overall odds of winning are 1 in 3.3.
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Awesome win. I always buy 3 in a row when buying scratchers. I'm running a little profit so far this year. Congrats! 💸💸
Man, what's up with California ? always winning while other states always on a dry run...
Right? Isn't it about time that a CA lottery game was won in a different state?
Go west young man
Nice, hope he tries again, congrats to the lucky guy.
Lucky guy and if I comprehended the article correctly he still came out about
$290 ahead after buying thirty $10 tickets. Nice no state tax on winnings either.
The part of the story that gets me is that he took them to work to scratch them. I'm very glad nobody stole them but I'd keep something as valuable as a book of pricy scratch offs at home. Definitely not in the office or car.
Great story! Congrats!
An X-ray machine to check for a winner before scratching. I can't be the first one to think of this.
Portable x-ray imaging and spectrometers are getting more affordable. All it takes to produce x-rays is to accelerate electrons with high voltages, the same voltages found in small stun guns.
If you were the owner or manager of the store I guess you could secretly x-ray all the scratch offs when the store was closed, set aside the books or rolls with big winners, sell them to your buddy, and leave the duds in the store to be sold to unwitting customers.
This scam sounds familiar. Wasn't there a news story about a retailer who did something similar?
Scared money don't make money.
Does not apply in this case. Congrats to him.
Curious as to how many other winners were in that book.
You can image the entire scratch off with one exposure using this portable x-ray imager.
Dental x-ray image and sensors can be bought for about $600, but the image size is small (~ 1 sq. in.)