Clerk apologizes for printing wrong lottery ticket. But his mistake paid off big time
.jpg "A loyal lottery player won big in Maryland — even after he was given the wrong ticket, officials said.")
You have to play to win.
That’s the thinking for one loyal Maryland lottery player who knows his local lottery retailers almost as much as the games themselves.
The man went into his regular Exxon in Upper Marlboro to buy five Cash4Life tickets and noticed there was a new clerk behind the counter, he told Maryland lottery officials in a Sept. 14 news release.
The lottery player said he handed the clerk his money and asked for his normal tickets, but the clerk printed Multi-Match tickets instead.
“I was like, ‘Oh, a new guy.’ He was so apologetic,” the man told officials.
The clerk tried to void the wrong tickets, but without success, so the man decided to try his luck with a different game in the Sept. 11 drawing.
Days later when he was leaving for work, he remembered to check his ticket.
He scanned the ticket using the lottery app and was directed to bring the ticket to lottery headquarters in Baltimore. He had won $580,000.
“This is the biggest prize of my life,” the winner told officials.
His wife said she thought the win was a prank until she saw a picture of the message, officials said. Then she called the win “divine intervention” after the ticket mishap.
“If anyone deserves this, it is him,” his wife told officials. “He is a hard-working man, a good husband and a good father.”
The pair plan to use the money to pay off a college loan for one of their children and pay some bills before starting their own family-run healthcare business.
The winner’s wife works in the healthcare field and wants to bring her focus to helping geriatric patients, she told officials.
“I will sleep very well tonight,” the winner said.
The accidental ticket was the sixth jackpot winner in the Multi-Match lottery game in 2023.
Upper Marlboro is about 40 miles south of Baltimore.
This story was originally published September 14, 2023 at 3:13 PM with the headline "Clerk apologizes for printing wrong lottery ticket. But his mistake paid off big time."
