Lottery winner’s wife reminded him to check his ticket. He didn’t believe what he saw

A Maryland man’s Powerball ticket collected dust in his wallet for months.

Unknowingly, he had won $100,000 in a drawing from March 25, more than four months before he finally collected his prize, Maryland lottery officials wrote in a news release.

The Hyattsville man had purchased a Powerball ticket ahead of a drawing that had an estimated jackpot of $112 million, according to officials. He put the ticket in his wallet, then it was out of sight, out of mind.

He doesn’t play the lottery often, he told Maryland officials. But “when the number is big enough to notice when I’m driving by, I play,” he said.

Eventually, the man’s wife found the Powerball ticket in his wallet.

“You should go down and check this,” she said.

He did. He took the ticket to a nearby store and scanned it. The machine told him to take his ticket to lottery headquarters, but that wasn’t enough to drive the win home for him. He was uncertain about the “cryptic” message, lottery officials said. So he looked up the numbers later, and it wasn’t until then that he knew he was holding a valuable ticket.

He and his wife were still in disbelief. The man waited for weeks before finally making an appointment to bring his ticket into lottery headquarters on Aug. 4. He had won $100,000, which is a third-tier prize from matching four white balls and the red Powerball with a 2X multiplier.

Check your lottery tickets, Maryland Lottery officials say. There are 13 unclaimed prizes from Mega Millions and Powerball drawings in the state as of Aug. 4, including a $4 million ticket purchased July 17.

Winners in Maryland have 182 days after a drawing to collect their prize.

“That’s a lot of money,” the winning man told lottery officials. “It’s not life-changing, but that’s a lot of money.”

He plans to use the money to fix up his truck and will stash the rest for a rainy day.

“It will rain,” he told lottery officials. “Sometimes it makes the grass grow. Sometimes you just get wet.”

Hyattsville is a suburb northeast of Washington, D.C.

This story was originally published August 7, 2023 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Lottery winner’s wife reminded him to check his ticket. He didn’t believe what he saw."