Man Had No Idea He Had Won $1 Million Powerball Prize For Three Months

In a wild, but relatable story to many people, a man in Missouri went three months before checking his Powerball lottery ticket only to find out that he had won $1 million.

The man had purchased his Powerball ticket way back on January 2nd, but didn’t collect his million dollars in winnings until April.

“I have an alarm set for me to check my tickets every three months,” the winner explained to Missouri Lottery officials. “So I didn’t know for a while.”

In fact, when his alarm finally went off, “I looked at it, and I’d won $1 million!”

His wife, naturally, didn’t believe him.

“I told my wife, and she thought it was a joke,” he said.

He says he plans to put most of the money into his retirement, but will also use some to do some projects around the house.

Surprisingly, this sort of thing happens more often than one might think.

Last year, a Michigan man who forgot he bought a lottery ticket ended up winning $430,194. He didn’t collect it until got an email from lottery officials notifying him that he had won.

“I was scrolling through my emails Monday morning while I was eating breakfast and saw a prize notification email from the Michigan Lottery,” the man said. “After reading the email, I knew it had to be a big prize. I logged in to my Lottery account to verify the prize and was stunned when I saw the amount pending. I woke my wife up right away to tell her what we’d won!”

A few months before that a $16 million winning Lotto Max ticket sat in a Canadian man’s wallet for nearly two months before he remembered it was in there and checked it.

Then there was the Maryland man who won $2 million on a lottery scratch-off ticket, but didn’t cash it in right away because he’d already won already $2 million once before playing the same game.