Canadian Lotto Winner Gets it Wrong

When Calgary man Michael Tkachyk ran his Canada Lotto 649 ticket through the automatic checker and discovered it was a winner he was not sure what he and his wife Deidre would do with their $70,000 lotto windfall. The options suddenly became a lot broader when he double-checked his numbers online and discovered he'd actually won $7.2 million.

"I checked it [the ticket] at the ticket checker, but I didn’t really know how much we’d won—there are no commas in the display,” Tkachyk said, explaining his mistake.

Deidre wasn't home at the time so he sent a text, asking her to contact him, and said it was 'important'. When she didn't reply he sent another text, saying it was 'urgent'. Hi next text said it was 'really urgent' and when Deidre finally responded she said it was 'amazing'.

"It felt surreal, it still does," Deidre admitted. "You can’t even imagine how it feels until it actually happens."