Man threw away $1.25 million worth of lottery tickets

Apr 13, 2014, 9:13 am (40 comments)

Pennsylvania Lottery

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."

York Daily Record, Lottery Post Staff

Comments

Marilyn222's avatarMarilyn222

Dumb...LOL

Litebets27's avatarLitebets27

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!!!

luckyshoes's avatarluckyshoes

$100 in 1 day on tickets.......$400 in 1 day......  dont you have bills to pay ?   lol

Jon D's avatarJon D

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?

Litebets27's avatarLitebets27

He must have been so use to losing that he felt when his numbers came up, that just couldn't be right.

Greg2117's avatarGreg2117

green sandals's avatargreen sandals

Speechless.  I feel sorry for that guy.

Gleno's avatarGleno

What a shame to read this story. A lesson for all of us.Disapprove

dpoly1's avatardpoly1

Ding Cuckoo,

Eastern PA LOL

golfer1960's avatargolfer1960

Quote: Originally posted by Greg2117 on Apr 13, 2014

what did he say? I couldn't understand it.

golfer1960's avatargolfer1960

Quote: Originally posted by green sandals on Apr 13, 2014

Speechless.  I feel sorry for that guy.

Yup, my worst fear. A nightmare.

maringoman's avatarmaringoman

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

hearsetrax's avatarhearsetrax

Quote: Originally posted by dpoly1 on Apr 13, 2014

Ding Cuckoo,

Eastern PA LOL

Type nice to know your have company eh , DP1

ThatScaryChick's avatarThatScaryChick

I would have a hard time looking at myself in the mirror if I basically threw away that much money. Unhappy

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