WASHINGTON — A Massachusetts woman appears to have the best luck in the U.S., winning not one but two $1 million prizes from scratch-off lottery tickets within 10 weeks.
According to the Massachusetts State Lottery, Christine Wilson won her first massive jackpot off of a "Lifetime Millions" $50 ticket on Feb. 23. She was the first person to win the million dollar prize from the game.
The second ticket, which she recently redeemed, was a "100X Cash" $10 ticket.
For both tickets, Wilson redeemed the cash prize of $650,000 rather than take the monthly installments, similar to how Powerball or Mega Millions tickets are redeemed.
Wilson said she plans to use part of the lottery winnings to buy a new SUV, while putting the rest in savings.
The first ticket was sold at Dubs’s Discount Liquors, in Mansfield. The second was from Family Food Mart, also in Mansfield. Both stores received a $10,000 bonus for selling winning tickets.
It's been a good year for lottery winners, with a number of high-profile wins in the past several months.
In March, a Nebraska man named Brant Edgington decided to buy a couple Mega Millions ticket with his sandwich one afternoon before the March 22 drawing. He didn't check the results until the following Saturday, when he tried to use a scanner to cash them in for any winnings. When the Check-a-Ticket scanner wouldn't read it, he asked an employee for help.
“They disappeared for a minute,” Edgington told the Nebraska Lottery. “Then a different lady came up with her and they just stared at me. She told me, ‘Don’t pass out when I tell you this.’”
And in April, the fourth-largest Powerball in the game's history was claimed by Cheng “Charlie” Saephan, of Portland, Oregon.
He told a news conference held by the Oregon Lottery that he and his wife, Duanpen, would split the prize evenly with a friend who chipped in $100 to buy a batch of tickets with them, Laiza Chao. They are taking a lump sum payment, $422 million after taxes.
