Canadian Grandma Who Falsely Believed She Won $40K Playing the Lotto Shocked to Discover She Actually Won $40M
They say the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. But who says that's always a bad thing?
51-year-old Maria Carreiro of Toronto thought she had won $40,000 in last week's Lotto Max drawing, but she got the number wrong.
Her real winnings had a few extra zeros and a comma tacked on to the end.
"When I went to the machine I just see 40 because I'd never won this amount of money," she told reporters attending her lottery check presentation ceremony. "I told [the clerk] can you check this for me please? He checks it. He doesn't even know himself and he's the store owner. I said ‘Never mind, I'll go home.'"
And go home she did.
"I went home and I told my daughter, ‘Oh I won $40,000,'" Carreiro recalled. "She's jumping off the bed too and then she calls her [sister] and says, 'Mommy won $40,000.'"
Just to be on the safe side — perhaps knowing that her mom wasn't the best with large figures — Carreiro's daughter decided to check the ticket one more time.
"She went on the computer and she checked the computer and she goes ‘Mommy, You're $40-million richer,'" Carreiro said.
After one last run to the store to verify, Carreiro called up her husband who soon thereafter quit both of his jobs.
Carreiro says she plans to distribute the cash among her three children and five grandchildren — right about she goes on a long-overdue honeymoon to Hawaii.
