Lottery player learns he won big — then goes back to store. ‘Wasn’t sure it was true’
A lottery winner couldn’t believe he hit the jackpot — so he went back to the store where he bought his lucky ticket.
“I wasn’t sure it was true,” the man told the South Carolina Education Lottery in a May 9 news release.
When the man returned to the store for a second opinion, he had the clerk scan his ticket. That’s when he discovered he had a prize waiting for him in Columbia, home to the lottery’s claims center.
“I was pretty sure I won then,” said the man, whose ticket was worth $200,000.
The man got richer after he stopped at a QuikTrip convenience store in Piedmont, a roughly 10-mile drive south from Greenville. He said he was at the store with a friend and didn’t plan to buy a lottery ticket at first.
But the man ended up spending $5 to play the Monopoly scratch-off game. His ticket scored one of the game’s top prizes, beating 1-in-720,000 odds to win.
The winner, who wasn’t identified in the news release, kept $139,000 after taxes, lottery spokesperson Holli Armstrong told McClatchy News in an email.
It’s not the first time someone had a hard time knowing whether a South Carolina lottery win was the real deal. Another player’s wife was skeptical about the lucky ticket he bought while getting doughnuts, McClatchy News reported in December.
