More than a year after his winning numbers were drawn, a man from the Newcastle region has just discovered he’s a millionaire after finding his unregistered winning ticket while cleaning his car on the weekend.
It follows a recent campaign by NSW Lotteries urging local players to check their old tickets.
The unregistered 24-game QuickPick ticket was purchased from Nextra Marketown Newsagency, in Marketown Shopping Centre, Newcastle West, and was one of four division one winners from Saturday Lotto draw 3597 on
The happy winner, who won a division one prize of $1,020,496.38, admitted he’d been “a bit stupid” by misplacing and forgetting about his ticket for 414 days.
“I line the bottom of my reusable Aldi shopping bags with old beer cartons to give them some strength. The ticket was hidden in underneath it and I didn’t know it was there!” he explained.
“I was cleaning rubbish out of my car on the weekend and thought it was time to put new cartons in the bottom of all my bags as they were starting to get torn and I got quite a surprise!
“I’m glad I didn’t just get the old bags and take them to the dump!
“I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my time!”After finding the ticket, the man checked it online and discovered he had become a millionaire a year ago.
“I thought I’d been pretty stupid. I was thinking ‘Wow! I could’ve thrown this out!’. It got very close,” he said.
“So I’m not worried that I could have had the money a year ago – at least I’ve got it now. It might have remained anonymous until the year 3900!
“There’s a few people who are going to benefit from this. I want to help the kids with their house payments and the grandkids with their education.
“It will smooth the troubled water in front of them.”
While a regular player with a NSW Lotteries Players Club card, he said he didn’t have the card on him when he purchased the division one winning ticket.
Nextra Marketown Newsagency owner Cheryl Tuckerman said the outlet was celebrating that the winner had been found.
“We’re over the moon! It’s like winning the lottery ourselves!” she said.
“It’s such a relief to know the winner has been united with their prize.
“You wouldn’t believe how many customers we’ve had coming in during the past year asking whether the winner had been found. We’re excited to be able to tell
them that now it has!”
“Congratulations to the winner!”