Jerry Ritieni from New York was searching in his truck for a set of keys when he came across a lottery ticket he had bought more than a month before.
He had stashed the ticket in his truck for safekeeping, but had ultimately forgotten about it and hadn't even checked the numbers on the ticket yet.
Upon finding the lost ticket he checked the numbers and not only saw that his Quick Picks had matched all the same numbers as the draw, but that they were also in the correct order.
“I’m circling them and I'm getting towards the third number and I’m like, 'No way,'” Ritieni told ABC News. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The first call made made was to his teenage son, followed by another call to his daughter to inform them both that he had just found out that he had won $2.9 million.
Ritieni had been playing the same lottery game with tickets from the same shop for over ten years before his millions finally came in. “My friends have houses upstate and whenever I go, I stop at the same gas station off the Long Island Expressway and get my coffee and gas and Lotto tickets,” he said. “That’s my routine.”
He went on to say that he doesn't have any big plans for his winnings yet other than paying for his kids education. He also plans to keep on playing the lottery, hoping that lightning will strike twice.
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