Woman Wins $15 Million With Lottery Ticket She Didn't Ask For

Kathy Scruggs of Lithonia, Georgia had been out of work for several months when she meandered into a Decatur Shell Food Mart to purchase a MegaMillions ticket. The clerk mistakenly handed her a Power Ball ticket, and with that ticket, Scruggs won the lottery’s $25 million jackpot.

She found out that she’d won when she checked the internet from drawing results a couple of days later. Reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

Scruggs discovered her good fortune the night after the drawing and woke up the entire house.

“We were screaming and hollering, and everybody came running,” she said. “I could not believe it.”

After that, she put her winning ticket in a Ziplock bag and stored it in one of her drawers until proceeding to the Georgia State Lottery headquarters to claim her prize earlier this week.

She opted to receive a lump sum cash payment, which means that after taxes, she’ll take home $15.1 million. She plans on using her winnings to build her mother and grandmother a house, start a foundation to provide housing and dental care to people in need, and presumably buy all the local stores out of that happiness they’re selling nowadays.

Lithonia Woman, 44, Is $25 Million Jackpot Lottery Winner [AJC]
Georgia Woman Wins $15.1 Million After Clerk Sells Her Wrong Lottery Ticket [NPR]