Cashier hands man wrong lottery ticket – and now he’s a millionaire in Michigan
A Michigan man became a millionaire after a store clerk handed him the wrong lottery ticket.
The 45-year-old man went to Speedway in Paw Paw to buy a lottery ticket, according to an April 21 news release from the Michigan Lottery.
He said he only plays Cashword games occasionally and it was “totally a fluke” that the cashier gave him one.
“I asked the cashier for a different game, and she mistakenly handed me this Major Cashword ticket instead. When she realized she gave me the wrong ticket, she offered to give me the game I’d asked for, but I told her I would just keep the Major Cashword ticket instead,” he said.
The man waited until the next morning to scratch the barcode on the $20 ticket, then his wife scanned it on her lottery app, he told lottery officials.
“When $1 million came up on the screen, I felt like I couldn’t breathe! I thought it was some sort of prank at first. Once I realized it was real, I put the ticket in a jar and buried it in the yard because I was so paranoid something would happen to it if I kept it in the house,” he said.
The man chose to receive a one-time lump sum payment of about $634,000, instead of annuity payments for the full amount.
He said he “plans to pay bills, pay off his home, and save for retirement.”
Paw Paw is about a 60-mile drive southwest of Grand Rapids.
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM with the headline "Cashier hands man wrong lottery ticket – and now he’s a millionaire in Michigan."
