A Virginia man who never plays the lottery took home a big win on a gifted ticket last week.
Daniel Schuman didn’t think much of the lottery ticket his wife bought him for Virginia’s New Year’s Millionaire Raffle, but it ended up winning him US$1 million.
“We saw that the number matched, and we checked again,” he told Virginia Lottery officials. “It was shocking. It’s like, this isn’t what we expected!”
Schuman picked up his winnings from a local 7-Eleven store on Feb. 20. The corner store received $10,000 for selling the ticket, which ended up being one of three top prize winners in the New Year’s Day drawing.
While many dream of how they’d spend a million-dollar win, the Arlington lawyer says he hasn’t thought that far ahead.
Two other million-dollar winners were from Portsmouth and Chesapeake. Five others won $100,000, and 500 other lottery players won $500.
The city of Arlington received more than $4.8 million in lottery funds last year, which was put towards kindergarten to Grade 12 public education, the lottery’s press release states.
They also put unclaimed prize money — a total of $6.5 million last year — toward providing low-interest loans to localities for public school construction, renovations and technology upgrades.
Another recent lottery winner had to also do a double-take when he nearly tossed his winning ticket into the garbage.
An unidentified man purchased a Palmetto Cash 5 lottery ticket at a gas station in Newberry, according to the state lottery commission. After checking his numbers and seeing they didn’t match the winning ones, he tossed it in the trash.
Little did he know, he’d actually been matching up his ticket with numbers from the day before, the South Carolina Education Lottery said on Feb. 10.
While casually sipping his coffee, the man realized he’d checked the wrong dates. Grabbing the ticket from his trash bin, he realized he’d actually won the $100,000 prize money.
“I checked the results for the day before,” he told the lottery organization. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The big winner plans to give some of his earnings to charity and to invest the rest in his grandchildren’s college funds, the lottery commission says.
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