Virginia Lottery Winner Discards $110K Ticket, Dumpster Dive Turns Up Fortune

A Virginia Lottery player was most fortunate when she hit a $110,000 Cash 5 jackpot during the February 24 draw. She needed more luck, however, in order to find the lucky ticket.

Mary Elliott of Buckingham County, Virginia, purchased a Cash 5 ticket for the February 24 draw. The Cash 5 game takes place seven nights a week at 11 pm ET. Tickets cost just a buck but come with an EZ Match option for $1.

Elliott went with the $2 play. And when her five numbers hit 6-13-18-21-25 her ticket became worth $110,000, which was the rolling jackpot at the time.

Unfortunately for Elliott, she realized in hindsight that she had accidentally tossed the Cash 5 ticket into the trash. She only realized that she had won because the five numbers she selected were important birthdates.

When I saw I d won, I couldn t stop shaking to save my life, Elliott told the Virginia Lottery.

Elliott said she quickly rummaged through her trash bins, desperately searching for the small piece of paper worth $110,000. After some anxious moments, she located the ticket.

Virginia allows lottery winners who win $10 million or more to remain anonymous. But smaller prize winners such as Elliott must remain on the public record.   

Even after Elliott found her Cash 5 ticket, she wasn t sure whether the would accept it. After all, she said the receipt had a coffee stain that prevented the barcode from scanning properly.

After a local lottery retailer could not validate the ticket, Elliott went to the Virginia Lottery s Prize Zone in Henrico. Lottery officials there were able to confirm the ticket s legitimacy and awarded her the $110,000 jackpot prize.

The odds of matching all five numbers are 1 in 749,398. The EZ Match component allows players to win a separate prize of up to $500. Elliott did not match any of the EZ Match numbers.

With lottery tickets often no larger than the size of a piece of scrap paper, Elliott s nearly $110,000 mistake isn t necessarily rare. Just last May, for example, a Massachusetts woman threw away a winning ticket worth $1 million.

As , Lea Rose Fiega handed a clerk at the Lucky Stop convenience store in Southwick her $30 Diamond Millions scratch-off after she thought it was a loser. The clerk placed the ticket in a trash receptacle behind the counter.

Later, the Lucky Stop owner Abhi Shah came across the ticket and quickly realized it was a winner. After discovering it was worth $1 million, the owner said he had a moral dilemma.

My inner soul told me, That s not right. You know who that person is. You should give that ticket back to them. And that s exactly what I did, Shah told The Washington Post.

He says he arrived at the right conclusion and tracked down Fiega. Shah won t go empty-handed, however, as the Massachusetts Lottery compensated the store $10,000 for selling the winning ticket.