Aug. 26 (UPI) — Two brothers in Maryland won $100,000 from a scratch-off lottery ticket they nearly threw away.
The brothers, who the Maryland Lottery did not name, have long pooled their money to play lottery games. They recently bought a batch of scratch-off games, which they were about to throw out — until one brother noticed at the last-minute that one ticket was a winner.
“We had a stack of scratch-offs that I had tossed aside because they weren’t winners,” the older brother said. “I was at the store checking them, just to be sure, and when I scanned this one it said, ‘Cash at Lottery.'”
They bought the ticket, for Maryland Lottery’s $10 Lady Luck game, at a Harris Teeter supermarket in Bowie, just outside Washington, D.C.
The older brother hopes other lottery players learn from his story.
“You have to make sure you check your tickets,” he said.
The two brothers, from Frederick County, are sharing the winnings to pay for their bills and pad their savings accounts. The older brother also won a $100,000 scratch-off prize more than three years ago.
The Maryland Lottery said thousands of winning tickets for the Lady Luck game remain unclaimed, including seven $100,000 prizes.