Shop Owners Return $1 Million Scratchcard that Had Been Thrown Away

SHOP OWNERS in the US kindly returned the winning lottery scratchcard to the woman who accidentally threw away the $1 million (€818,431). The owners of the shop kept the winning ticket behind the counter for 10 days until the lucky lady eventually collected her winnings.

Lea Rose Fiega purchased the $30 Diamond Millions in March at the ‘Lucky Stop’ convenience store in Southwick, Massachusetts, close to where she works. Fiega commented that “I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and just looked at it, and it didn’t look like a winner, so I handed it over to them to throw away.”

The son of the store’s owners, Abhi Shah, told WWLP-TV, “One evening, I was going through the tickets from the trash and found out that she didn’t scratch the number. I scratched the number and it was one million dollars underneath the ticket.”

Fiega is a regular customer of the Lucky Stop shop so the family immediately knew who had discarded the winning ticket. Shah went to see Fiega at her workplace to break the good news, “He came to my office and said ‘my Mom and Dad would like to see you’…”So when I went over there and that’s when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.”

The shop receives a $10,000 (€8,184) bonus from the US state lottery commission for selling the winning ticket. The family were also given an additional reward from the winner who plans to save the rest for her retirement.