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Title: Spain lotto winner nearly loses millions by tossing tickets Post by: Donna on 04-Jan-11, 09:16:13 AM :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish lottery player nearly lost nine million euros (12 million dollars) in winnings after tossing tickets in the rubbish only to later discover they were winners, Spanish media said. Ignacio Gonzalez, a lottery ticket vendor in the country's northern Basque Country, was stunned to discover Friday that the number he had played along with 14 friends -- 48104 -- had come up in a charity draw run by a Spanish organisation for the blind, ONCE. Gonzalez's euphoria quickly turned to despair, however, when he could not find the winning tickets. "The New Year was off to a very good start, with a shower of millions, but on the other hand I couldn't find the tickets," Gonzalez told Basque radio station Radio Euskadi. After a desperate search of his home and with hope running out, Gonzalez ran out to his neighbourhood rubbish bin. "Without thinking about it for two seconds and in front of stunned passers-by, he dumped over the container" and began rifling through its contents, newspaper ABC wrote Sunday in an account of the incident. Mixed in with the rubbish, Gonzalez finally found the winning tickets, no worse for wear, allowing him and his friends to collect more than 600,000 euros each in winnings. [Extreme luck: Lottery winner hits jackpot...four times] After the close call, Gonzalez admitted that he feared his friends would have "crucified" him if he had lost the tickets for good. Quote (I'd go to the dump if need be to find that ticket)!! Title: Re: Spain lotto winner nearly loses millions by tossing tickets Post by: Donna on 04-Jan-11, 09:18:02 AM Nicest Canadian couple in world dole out lottery winnings
A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away. "What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter. She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July. "That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other." The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports: |