Man Forgets About Lottery Tickets, Finds $2.9M Winner In His Truck

(Reuben Whitehouse)

Maybe there’s a trick to having a winning lottery ticket — perhaps if you ignore your tickets and don’t check to see if they’re winners right away, they’ll suddenly turn into millions of dollars in prize money. That’s what happened to a New York auto shop owner who found he’d had $2.9 million sitting in his truck, waiting for him to collect.

The Long Island man bought $20 worth of tickets in July, and tells the New York Post he simply shoved them into his truck’s center console and forgot all about them.

Cut to a month later when he was rooting around in his truck and decided to check out those Lotto tickets, you know, just in case. He looked the numbers up online and realized as he circled the matching numbers that he was a millionaire.

“It took a minute for me to comprehend that I just hit the jackpot. I was like, ‘No way, no way! Holy s–t!’ ”

he tells the Post, adding that he ran out of his office and told his son he’d just hit it big.

Though his son didn’t believe him at first, the two drove to the local lottery office and had the win confirmed — $2.9 million on one of those forgotten tickets.

Then he returned to work to share the good news, as anyone who’s just won a few million might do.

“He came back smiling,” one of his employees said. “His smile gave it away — he never smiles. That was a $3 million smile.”

Auto shop owner finds winning $2.9M lottery ticket in his truck [New York Post]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist