A Michigan man nearly missed out on winning $390,000 after he forgot about a lottery ticket he left in his car
A Michigan man almost missed out on $25,000 a year for life after leaving a lottery ticket in his car.
He said he checked the ticket a month after the drawing but forgot to see what the winnings were.
He went out of town for the winter and wasn't able to claim his prize from August until this week.
A Michigan man nearly missed out on nearly $400,000 after he forgot about a lottery ticket he left in his car for weeks.
Floyd Warstler, 70, won the lottery on August 13, 2022, but he didn't claim his prize until last week because he forgot about his ticket, according to the Michigan state lottery.
Warstler told Michigan Lottery Connect that he buys a Lucky for Life lottery ticket every Monday and that about a month after the drawing, he realized he had never checked one particular ticket, so he decided to scan it at the store.
He said he got a message that told him to file a claim at the Lottery office when he scanned the old ticket.
"I thought maybe I'd won a $5,000 prize," Warstler said, according to the lottery.
He then got back into the car and "set the ticket aside to check when I got home and I ended up forgetting about it."
Thankfully, a week later, Warstler said, his girlfriend found the winning ticket in his car. She asked him if he had checked it and he told her about the message that popped up when he scanned it, so she looked up the winning numbers from the drawing date online.
"When we found out I'd won $25,000 a year for life, we couldn't believe it!" Warstler said.
But that wasn't the end of this journey: Warstler said they went out of town for the winter just a few days after learning about the winning prize so he couldn't collect it until recently.
According to Michigan Lottery Connect, Warstler chose to claim his winnings in a one-time lump sum of $390,000 rather than take the $25,000 per year payments for the rest of his life. He said he is going to invest the money he won.
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