Stories about winning lottery tickets being thrown in the trash should be quite rare, but within the space of just four days last week three lottery winners included a little trash talk while sharing tales of their big win.
On Saturday, June 7, 2014, Todd Solarz from Duluth, Minnesota, won USD$ 1 million for matching all five of the winning US Powerball numbers. He claimed his prize on June 12, and admitted to Minnesota Lottery workers he'd come close to throwing his ticket away.
"I always check the Powerball number first and it didn’t match so I didn’t think it was a winner, but then all the other numbers started matching up," Solarz explained.
An Australian Lotto winner who scooped a AUD$ 1 million prize on Wednesday, June 6, also had a trash story to share when she claimed her prize. When she wanted to check her numbers she was unable to find her ticket. She searched the house without luck, finally checked the trash, and discovered her mother had thrown away the ticket by mistake.
That very same day, albeit in a different time zone, a down-and-out Californian man was indulging in a spot of dumpster diving after he witnessed an angry winner tear up a scratch-off ticket. "I don’t need the money," the man said.
Thirty-six-year-old Lorenzo Juarez did need the money, so he retrieved the pieces of ticket from the dumpster and claimed the USD$ 500 prize.
