A Maryland man said he almost handed over a winning $50,000 lottery ticket to a friend in order to repay a $40 debt — until his wife stopped him.John Hamilton Jr., of Cumberland, had purchased a $50 scratch-off ticket from a convenience store in nearby Cresaptown on July 3 before folding it up, placing it in his back pocket and forgetting about it, according to the the Maryland Lottery.The following day, Hamilton ran into a friend whom he owed $40. Remembering the unscratched ticket in his pocket, he offered it instead of...
A Maryland man said he almost handed over a winning $50,000 lottery ticket to a friend in order to repay a $40 debt — until his wife stopped him.
John Hamilton Jr., of Cumberland, had purchased a $50 scratch-off ticket from a convenience store in nearby Cresaptown on July 3 before folding it up, placing it in his back pocket and forgetting about it, according to the the Maryland Lottery.
The following day, Hamilton ran into a friend whom he owed $40. Remembering the unscratched ticket in his pocket, he offered it instead of cash.
“I told him it could be something on it,” the Air Force veteran recalled while speaking to the Maryland Lottery.
However, he said his wife intervened just as he was about to hand over the ticket. “She put her hand between us and intercepted the play,” Hamilton said. “That’s when I thought I should play it and see if it really was a winner.”
Hamilton scratched off part of the ticket while sitting in his car and quickly realized he might have won something.
Unsure of exactly what he was looking at, Hamilton said he returned to the convenience store where he purchased the ticket and asked the cashier to take a look.
“I showed her and asked, [if it] was it real, and she said, ‘Looks like it,’ and that I should scratch the rest of it,” he said.
As more winning amounts appeared, Hamilton realized he had won a major prize.
“I knew it was big,” he said.
The cashier then scanned the ticket, confirming it was worth $50,000.
“I was dumbfounded,” Hamilton said when he later claimed his prize at Maryland Lottery headquarters on July 21.
He said one of his first calls was to his wife, knowing that without her intervention, the winning ticket would have gone home with someone else.
Hamilton said he plans to use the money to pay down his mortgage and take his three youngest children on a Disney cruise.
According to the Maryland Lottery, Hamilton’s winning ticket came from the $5,000,000 LUXE scratch-off game, which launched in February. Two $5 million top prizes and several other large prizes remained unclaimed as of July 22.