Music teacher forgot he played the lottery. Then, a lucky ticket fell from his wallet
A music teacher forgot he played the lottery — then a lucky ticket fell from his wallet.
It turns out, the ticket beat the odds to win $150,000 in the Powerball game, the Virginia Lottery wrote in a May 4 news release.
Vasilis Simmons scored the big prize after a stop at a 7-Eleven in Virginia Beach. While at the convenience store, officials said he spent $3 on the winning Powerball ticket.
But Simmons, who doesn’t usually play the lottery, forgot all about his ticket. That’s until it “just happened to fall out of his wallet,” leading to a six-figure surprise, officials said.
Though Simmons missed out on the estimated jackpot of $182 million, his ticket matched enough numbers in the April 8 drawing to win big. After scoring the prize money, the winner said he will pay bills but didn’t have other plans right away.
Simmons, who beat 1-in-25 odds to win a prize in the Powerball game, isn’t the first person to have a lottery ticket escape their mind. In North Carolina, a forgotten paper in a woman’s purse turned out to be a prize-winning ticket, McClatchy News reported in January.
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This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 8:51 AM with the headline "Music teacher forgot he played the lottery. Then, a lucky ticket fell from his wallet."
