Dylan Bettencourt
An American man thought his day could not get any better when he won R10,000 off a lottery scratch ticket.
Smiling from ear to ear the man went to collect his winnings, but when he got to the collection point he was told he had actually won R17 million.
Jose Flores Velasquez bought the “20X the Money” scratch-off ticket from a grocery store in Virginia after work, the local lottery company said.
“He had the choice of taking the full $1 million prize over 30 years,” said a lottery official, “or a one-time cash option of $759,878 before taxes,” Business Insider reports.
“He chose the cash option. The store receives a $10,000 bonus from the Virginia Lottery for selling the winning ticket.”
Velasquez, still in his dirty work clothes, showed off his cheque for one million dollars. He said he would use the winnings to open a business.
The odds of winning the lottery is one in 1,754,400.
Velasquez is not the only American man of late to get lucky with lottery winnings. A man from Charlottesville won R2.2 million in two months after purchasing 264 lottery tickets.
Another man won R4.5 million in July after playing numbers that he claimed to have seen in his dreams.
Image source: @VirginiaLottery
