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A Morrinsville Lottery player drove for a month with his winning ticket in the glove compartment of his car (file photo).
A man drove through Morrinsville for a month with a winning $ 5.5 million lottery ticket in the glove compartment of his car.
The family told the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, to check his ticket, but he never did.
He didn’t realize it until two people from Lotto New Zealand approached him last week and told him he was the winner of the $ 5.5 million Lotto Powerball drawn on October 17.
Parents worry that big lottery winnings will end up making their kids lazy. (Video first published in February 2020)
“Anyway, I never thought I would be the lucky winner, it’s unbelievable,” the man said in a statement.
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“It was a huge shock when the people from Lotto came up to me and said they thought I was the owner of a ticket worth $ 5.5 million.
“I kept thinking, you have to be kidding… but you weren’t.
“They asked me if I had my ticket with me, which I did, so we manually dialed the numbers using the Lotto NZ app. They all agreed and the first thing the lady said was to write my name on the back.
“That’s when I realized it, and I thought, oh my God, this changes my life.
Tom Lee / Stuff
Morrinsville, famous for its giant and colorful cows in the city, is now also home to a mega lottery.
“Next time I’ll listen to my daughter tell me to check my ticket.”
After the news, the man went home and told his wife that they were $ 5.5 million richer.
“He came home and said, ‘We have to go to Auckland this week love…. I won the lottery. ‘ It really was amazing, but I knew he was telling the truth. “
Then the man called his daughter.
“I called her and said, guess what? Two people from Lotto visited me today to tell me that I was the winner of $ 5.5 million in Morrinsville, ‘”he laughed.
Powerball winners generally claim their prize within days of winning. After waiting a few weeks, Lotto decided to track down the winner.
Marie Winfield, Lotto NZ’s head of communications, said that Lotto was able to track the winner through his fingerprint.
“It’s not every day you can walk up to someone on the street and tell them we think they are a billionaire,” Winfield said.
“They said the best thing was seeing the look on the man’s face when he checked the ticket and realized they weren’t kidding, describing it as ‘absolutely priceless.’
The family visited Lotto head office in Auckland to claim their prize and are finally celebrating the big win.
The family has yet to make any major decisions about what to do with the money, but they said they would like to pay off their mortgage.
Next, you want to make sure your children are prepared for the future.
The winning ticket was sold at Paper Plus Morrinsville for the drawing on Saturday, October 17, 2020.
