He had $1 million sitting under his nose the entire time

By Kate Northrop

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Over the past few months, a Kentucky man accumulated a stack of unchecked lottery tickets, but little did he know that there was a $1 million winning Powerball ticket sitting right there the entire time.

An anonymous Kentucky lottery player was not expecting to find a slip of paper worth $1 million tucked away in an old stack of unchecked lottery tickets.

This lottery player has a habit of allowing his lottery tickets to accumulate before he goes about checking them all at once. Some of the tickets in his most recent stack date back to June.

Last Monday night, he sat down to go through them.

"I had gone through about 40 tickets and got to the last five to see if I had any winners," he told the Kentucky Lottery. "I was looking at the numbers on my phone, when suddenly I saw the numbers, I had always been playing. I kept looking at the ticket and looking at the date, making sure it was correct."

The ticket in question dated back to the Powerball drawing on Aug. 31, which he bought with the same numbers he has been picking for years using a combination of family birthdays.

"I leaned back on my couch, and then started yelling for my family to come check it out," the player continued. "They took the ticket, checked Google to see how much you win for matching the five white ball winning numbers and not the Powerball, and told me we had just won a million dollars. I kept asking myself — am I dreaming?"

The day after discovering the ticket, the winner had to head to work, but he admitted he had a hard time sleeping the night before knowing that he would soon be heading to Lottery headquarters in Louisville to claim a great deal of money.

Just to be positively sure he was not dreaming, he watched the whole Aug. 31 Powerball drawing on his phone at work. Sure enough, he watched his numbers get drawn.

He wrapped up at work that afternoon and took a trip to Lottery headquarters and was awarded a check for $710,000 after taxes.

With the money, he says his family is considering buying a new home.

The $1 million winning ticket was purchased at Crossroads IGA on Abigail Way in Lexington, which receives a $10,000 bonus for selling it. The ticket matched the first five white ball numbers in the Powerball drawing on Aug. 31, which were 7, 8, 19, 24, and 28. The Powerball number was 1.