Winner is fortunate to find ticket in time but still delays claim
By Kate Northrop
EAST JORDAN, Mich. — A Michigan lottery winner was lucky to discover a missing Fantasy 5 jackpot winning ticket worth $240,955 but intentionally waited until the deadline to claim it.
The winner of a $240,955 Fantasy 5 lottery jackpot waited nearly an entire year to validate his ticket.
The anonymous Charlevoix County man's journey to win the jackpot began just over a year ago, when he purchased a Fantasy 5 ticket for the Aug. 28, 2025 drawing at East Jordan Central EZ Mart on Water Street in East Jordan.
"I play Fantasy 5 every day and I always buy my tickets at the same store," the 66-year-old player told the Michigan Lottery. "I saw online that someone won a Fantasy 5 jackpot with a ticket purchased at the store I always play at, so I checked what I thought was all of my tickets, but none of them were the big winner."
The drawing took place that evening to result in winning numbers 7, 10, 21, 25, and 33. Unbeknownst to the player, those numbers were sitting on a ticket somewhere in his house.
"Several months later, I heard that the $240,955 jackpot still had not been claimed, so I went home and started looking around for a Fantasy 5 ticket," he recalled. "I ended up finding one that had fallen behind the counter in the garage where I keep all my tickets, and sure enough it was the jackpot winning ticket!"
While the discovery took him for quite the surprise, he decided to hold off on getting over to Lottery offices to validate it.
"I waited to claim the prize for a few more months after finding the ticket because I wanted to take some time to think about what I was going to do with the money," the winner explained.
According to the Lottery's announcement on Aug. 28, a full year after the drawing, he waited to claim the prize "days before" it expired.
"It feels great to finally be cashing in almost a year later!" the player remarked.
With the winnings, he plans on paying off his mortgage and buying a cabin.
Players may add the EZmatch feature to their ticket for an additional $1 per play for a chance to win up to $500 or the Double Play feature for a second chance to win up to $110,000 in the nightly Double Play drawing. Players may win prizes in the regular nightly drawing, the Double Play drawing, or both. Fantasy 5 drawings take place every day at 7:29 p.m. Eastern Time.
The winning numbers, jackpot, and prize amounts can be found on Lottery Post's Michigan Lottery Results page right after each drawing.
Saw a u tube video of Gawlitza and his lawyer, turns out Circle K has a company policy that requires employees to purchase unsold printed tickets. Gawlitza an employee for 17 years did so and when Circle K found out the ticket was the winner they demanded Gawlitza give them the ticket. When asked why Gawlitza handed over his ticket, he replied he wanted to be in compliance with company policy. Circle K promptly terminated Gawlitzas employment. He cannot find a job,because prospective employers see that he's the guy with the lawsuit. I think the jury is going to side with Gawlitza, he did nothing wrong yet Circle K is trying to tarnish his good name.
It seems odd that they created a law to allow winners of 10k+ to stay anonymous ONLY on state games, not Mega Millions or Powerball. To me, it seems more important for the larger winners to keep their anonymity.
I'd be contacting the Michigan state legislators about expanding the law to include all games if I lived there.
Congrats to the Lucky guy.
Good thing he heard the unclaimed ticket was still out there and decided to look around for it.
Sometimes, ya never know!!
Congrats!!!
Not on the same caliber, but reminds of the NJ who won millions and casually put it in the mail to their HQRS and got there in time. Just looked it up...$46 million ticket from Passaic, NJ!! 2001 story.
This done very well investor here said he'd buy $100 Megamillions tickets which I did. In store promotion buy $10 MM one a single ticket and get one plain PB ticket. Those ten tickets nothing, but the MM did pay $50 just now. Took a 5 out of the wallet and bought one all options on PB and remaining $1 on Cashball 225.