Tips for protecting your lottery win
Michigan Lottery says annual complaints impact only a tiny percentage of the agency’s 10,500 retailers, but all are taken seriously and investigated.
Mandi Wright, Wochit
A Macomb County man is lucky he double-checked a Michigan Lottery instant ticket he had purchased after originally not seeing it was worth a huge prize.
The 43-year-old man, who chose to remain anonymous, scratched a Magnificent Millions instant ticket, but didn’t see any winning matches and put the ticket aside, according to the Michigan Lottery.
“When I play instant games, I skip around when I scratch the ticket off,” the man told the Michigan Lottery. “I thought I had scratched everything off and didn’t see any winning matches, so I tossed the ticket aside.
“The next time I stopped at a gas station, I took the ticket inside and scanned it just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. When I scanned it and got the message to file a claim, I knew I had missed something on the ticket. When I looked it over again, I saw a spot I forgot to scratch. When I revealed I was a $4 million winner I went numb!”
The man recently claimed his prize and opted to receive it as a one-time lump sum payment of about $2.7 million instead of annuity payments for the full amount.
He plans to save the money.
He purchased his ticket at the 9 Mile Stop & Go located at 28955 Van Dyke in Warren.
Magnificent Millions tickets cost $30. The game started with three top prizes of $4,000,000. Two remain unclaimed.
