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An accountant from Lakeville, Minnesota, walked
around for a whole month without realising that
his wallet contained a Powerball lottery ticket
worth over $47 million. Michael Hawes had purchased
a ticket covering eight draws from November
1, and his numbers came up in the very first
draw - but it wasn't until Monday 4 December
that he realised this.
Michael is engaged to Sarah and has two sons
- Hunter, aged 18, is from a previous relationship
and Lucky, aged 8 months, was born six weeks
early. It's not hard to see how a father with
a young family to take care of might forget
to check his numbers after every draw, but to
go a whole month without discovering a win of
such massive proportions is a lot more unusual.
The accountant only found out about his win
when he returned to the store where he purchased
the ticket to buy a soda. Whilst he was there
he decided to get another Powerball ticket and
he asked the store clerk to scan his old tickets
just in case he'd landed a win. When the clerk
scanned one ticket, the lottery machine displayed
a message saying that the ticket needed to be
validated at Powerball headquarters. Out of
curiosity, the clerk then checked the ticket
against the winning numbers for November 1 and
said, "Those are your numbers!"
Michael took his ticket from the clerk, left
his shopping cart where it was and exited the
store shaking. The next day he telephoned his
office and told them he was taking the day off
because he "had something to attend to."
That something was a journey to the Powerball
headquarters in Roseville, where his ticket
was validated as one of two which shared the
$94.1 million jackpot.
The staggering news is still sinking in for
Michael, and he hasn't yet decided whether to
take $47 million as an annuity over 29 years
or as an immediate but smaller lump sum of $22.1
million before taxes. He has until February
5 of 2007 to make that choice. In the meantime,
the store which sold the winning Powerball ticket
receives a bonus of $50,000.
7 December 2006
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