A man from Wellington, New Zealand, decided to take some time out and check through his old Lotto tickets and discovered he'd been sitting on a $250,000 first division win for nearly a month. He was quick to share the news with his wife, but she didn’t believe him and scolded him for telling lies.
The winner has asked the lottery to keep his identity a secret, but lottery staff reveal he bought his winning ticket from Whitcoulls Queensgate in Lower Hutt.
It was one of four tickets that matched all the numbers in the Saturday, February 15, drawing.
The winner finally got around to checking his ticket on Sunday, March 9, and was shocked to see his six numbers lined up on the computer screen.
"I hollered out to the wife 'We've won Lotto'," the man recalled. "She said, 'That's good, how much?' When I said 'A quarter of a million dollars', she told me off. So she checked the ticket herself. Then she believed me and next thing you know she's on phone the ringing up the whole family."
The man now plans to put his lotto windfall to good use by using the money to redo the bathroom and complete all the unfinished projects around their home.
The next New Zealand Lotto Drawing is on Saturday night at 20:00 and has an estimated jackpot of $1 million, but New Zealand Powerball players have bigger goals to aim for because Saturday's Powerball jackpot is $5 million.
