Malcolm Meredith
Virginia Lottery
A Virginia man was told his lottery ticket didn’t win — but later discovered it was worth $1 million.
“I was hoping and praying,” winner Malcolm Meredith said in an Aug. 4 news release.
Meredith cashed in on his seven-figure prize weeks after someone told him his ticket wasn’t a winner. But the Virginia Lottery said Meredith decided to hang onto his ticket and checked again.
Waiting for a “second opinion” paid off when Meredith found out he won big time. It turns out, his ticket missed the larger Mega Millions jackpot prize but still scored $1 million, officials said.
Meredith won the cash after he bought a lucky ticket from a Harris Teeter grocery store in Manassas. While at the supermarket roughly 30 miles outside of Washington, D.C., he decided to play the Mega Millions game, officials said.
The computer at the store randomly generated a set of numbers that matched almost all of those picked in the May 20 drawing. That means Meredith’s ticket beat 1-in-12 million odds to win big, though the Virginia Lottery in its news release didn’t share how much of the prize he kept after taxes.
It’s not the first time someone had doubts about a major windfall.
In July, a North Carolina man thought someone else scored a jackpot prize before realizing he was actually the winner, McClatchy News reported.
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