A $3 million dollar prize was nearly missed by a woman because of spam in the mail

Laura Spears was one of the luckiest women in Michigan to win an award. However, she was also close to becoming one of the unluckiest women ever. The Detroit resident nearly missed out on a $3 million dollar win that was mistakenly sent to her mailbox – legitimate winnings confused with a fake spam promise.

The prize and a real twist of luck

It wasn’t a hoax, however, as Spears actually won a huge check in a multi-state lottery. The woman played once on New Year’s Eve and all five of her numbers matched. She then added a side bet multiplier, resulting in a triple payout. However, Spears had no idea what was going on until she stumbled upon it in her trash can. Skeptical at first, she decided to check it out on her lottery account and upon logging into the site, she discovered that she had indeed won $3 million. Thanks to the lottery and good internet skills, Spears would not have missed out on the fateful seven-figure sum. Instead, the 55-year-old woman will now retire and share her good fortune with her family. But that’s not all, as Spears also decided to mark the Michigan Lottery as “not spam” in case she found herself winning again. The $3 million jackpot isn’t the biggest prize you can win in the United States, and after a (mostly) quiet lottery drawing on Tuesday night, the Mega Millions jackpot has grown to $421 million, with the next draw scheduled for Friday, January 28. Those numbers are still a far cry from some of the biggest prizes ever won, including the $1.54 billion jackpot won in October 2018.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed lottery winnings

“Clerical errors,” are not all that uncommon. You might think that no one misses seven-figure lottery prizes and that they’d be on the lookout for them in every draw, but the numbers tell a different story. In 2016, 114 prizes worth at least $1 million went unclaimed, one of the largest numbers in history. According to a 2018 study, billions of cash prizes went unclaimed by mid-2017, and the trend continues. The higher the level of participation in gambling lotteries, the more prizes were blocked because winners never showed up for their winnings. One of the reasons for this is that everyone is so focused on the main jackpot that they don’t realize that there are secondary prizes. Read more interesting articles on our website – here

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