However, he realized that he had forgotten to save these exact numbers as favourites and he logged back into his Michigan Lottery app to store the numbers, not realizing that he had bought an additional ticket this way, with the exact same numbers. When realizing that he had bought two tickets with exactly the same numbers, 01-05-09-10-23, the man was slightly annoyed, but did not think much of it thereafter. After recently logging into his lottery application to check some of the results on tickets that he had purchased, he saw that the two tickets that he had bought, each had a pay-out prize of $1 million, or 16 million ZAR, totalling on 32 million ZAR. Luckily, the Michigan Lottery allows for winners to claim their pay-outs up to a year after the drawing date has passed. In addition, winners also have the option of remaining anonymous.
Stunned, grateful, and planning for the future
The Michigan man had said that being stunned would have been an understatement and that he could not believe that it had been real. It took the man a few days before he had realized that his mistake had ended up in him winning a total pay-out of $2 million. Since bagging this substantial pay-out, the Michigan man has claimed his winnings and claimed that he plans on buying a home and placing the rest of his winnings into savings. The Michigan man, amongst so many other people who have had the chance to win such substantial winnings, is provided with some level of comfort in knowing that, when he retires, he will have some money in the bank. A mirrored, and less fortunate instance, which occurred in Florida, was when a woman had forfeited her winnings, amounting to $1,000, after a Post Office, located in Tallahassee, had lost her ticket by accident. The Florida woman, had to mail her ticket due to the Covid-19 pandemic, either in a drop box or through certified mail. She opted to send it through the latter due to the time limit associated with her prize claim, however, the ticket never made its way to the lottery office. Due to the ticket not being received in time, the woman forfeited her prize as it went to an alternative winner.
