Imagine buying a winning lottery ticket and hitting big.
Now, imagine buying a lottery ticket, accidentally buy an identical lottery ticket, and winning on both.
Samir Mazahem, 56, of Dearborn Heights, Michigan bought was saving numbers on a lottery app after buying a $2 ticket for the Mega Millions drawing.
“I went online and bought a ticket using numbers that are family birthdays,” Mazahem told Michigan Live. “I forgot to save the numbers as favorites in the app, so I went back in and set them up as favorites so I could easily play them in the future.
Mazahem quickly realized he purchased a second ticket with the same numbers. Mazahem said he was “bummed” about the mistake but realized it’s only a couple of bucks.
Mazahem’s mistake led to a double win – each ticket was worth a million dollars – and the Michigan man had no idea he won anything until the next time he logged into his lottery account.
“I couldn’t believe it was real,” Mazahem said. “It took several days for the reality to set in that my mistake had paid off to the tune of $2 million!”
“Winning is exciting and gives me some comfort knowing that when I retire, I will have money in the bank,” Mazahem said.
But before throwing most of the money in savings, Mazahem told MLive he’s going to buy a house.
The craziest part of this story is that a guy in Alberta, Canada named Andrew Burke did almost the EXACT same thing recently.
Burke accidentally bought two identical lottery tickets for the same Lotto drawing and ended up splitting the $3.8 million with himself.
Most of us would kill for just one of these tickets.
[via MLive]