A woman got an unexpected surprise after winning the lottery—completely by mistake.
Last month, Kelly Lindsay stopped at a Race Way gas station in Carrollton, Virginia, to buy a lottery scratch card. She had a specific game in mind, paid for her ticket, and went to her car to scratch it.
But then she noticed something was wrong. She had been given the wrong scratch card. At first, she wasn’t happy about it. But her frustration quickly disappeared when she scratched the ticket and saw that she had won a $2,000,000 jackpot.
Talking about her surprise win, she laughed and said, “I got over not being happy about it!”
Most people would probably feel the same way if a mistake led to millions of dollars.
The Virginia Lottery confirmed her win and explained her payout options. Kelly could either take the full $2 million in yearly payments over 30 years or a one-time cash payment of $1,250,000 before taxes.
The lottery also shared some interesting odds: The chances of winning the top prize were 1 in 1,142,400, and the overall chance of winning any prize was 1 in 3.29.
Kelly isn’t the only one who won big by accident.
Back in 2018, Tayeb Souami also found himself much richer after a simple mistake.
Tayeb had gone to a store to return an expensive bottle of orange juice after his wife said it was too costly. Instead of getting a new drink, he used the money to buy two Powerball lottery tickets.
He forgot about them until the next day. When he finally checked the numbers, one ticket was worthless. But the other? It was worth $315,000,000.
When he scanned it, the machine told him to visit the retailer. That’s when he learned his life had changed forever.
Speaking to the press, Tayeb said he planned to use the money for his children’s education. He also joked that his win made him love orange juice—a feeling most people would probably share.