Honest and humble winner can afford what was previously unattainable

By Kate Northrop

PHILLIPSBURG, N.J. — An honest New Jersey lottery player ignored the pressure to keep a rogue $100 bill for themselves and won a $1 million prize immediately after refusing the money.

Is it worth declining $100 if it means potentially winning a million dollars instead? Karma must have thought so, and after being rewarded with a $1 million lottery prize, one New Jersey player is happy they listened to their conscience.

On April 30, an anonymous New Jersey resident visited Paul Mart on South Main Street in Phillipsburg intending to buy some scratch-off tickets. As they approached the clerk, they noticed a lone $100 bill sitting on the counter.

"I see it, and I turn around. There's a person at the ATM and two people waiting in line," the player recalled to the New Jersey Lottery. "I said, 'Did somebody leave this here?'"

The player then asked for an envelope to put the money in so that the store could store it in lost and found, they said to Lottery officials.

"Everybody's saying, 'Just keep it,'" the player recalled. "I feel that if you take something that's not yours, you will never get your own, and everybody there just looked at me like I was nuts."

In the end, the player opted to listen to their gut rather than the customers around the store, and so the cashier took the $100 bill for safekeeping. Immediately after, the player purchased three "Power 20X" tickets for $20 each.

They scratched their tickets, scanned them with the retailer's ticket checker, and noticed something different about one of them — a message that they had won the game's $1 million top prize.

"I thought the ticket wasn't activated, but the clerk said, 'You have the golden ticket,'" the player said in a press release. "I started crying and shaking."

The player visited Lottery offices in Trenton to claim the prize, relaying to staff that they believe the win was some sort of good karma resulting from their honest actions.

"I thought if I had taken that $100 bill, I would have felt guilty and I would have left there and never bought the ticket," they emphasized. "I just truly believe it was a test from God."

With the winnings, the player wants to buy a modest house and a reliable car, which were previously unattainable for them.

This win marked the third and final claim for the $1 million top prize in the $20 "Power 20X" scratch-off game, which launched in February 2023. There are still nine out of 48 second-tier prizes of $10,000 and 69 out of 371 third-tier prizes of $2,000 remaining.

On average, according to the Lottery, better than 1 ticket in 4 wins a prize.