Mother Of Two Buys Lottery Ticket By Mistake, Ends Up Winning $5 Million

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Mother Of Two Buys Lottery Ticket By Mistake, Ends Up Winning $5 Million

What would you do if you won the lottery? We've all dreamed of suddenly coming into a ton of money that we basically didn't have to do any work for, so what would be the best way for you to spend it?

Tropical Islands

Would you quit your job in a spectacular fashion, relocate somewhere tropical, and live out the rest of your days in peace? Or maybe you'd take your family and friends on the trip of a lifetime to somewhere exotic? Or you could even just pay off your debts and live comfortably off the interest for the rest of your life.

ParisInfo

Of course, no matter how often we buy ourselves a ticket, it just seems like we can never get lucky enough to win. This likely has to do with the fact that the odds are so small they're basically microscopic, but somehow people have managed to win it without even really trying, so why can't we?!

Daily Express

Case and point: Oksana Zaharov, a 46-year-old mother of two from North Jersey, was out shopping when she was given the wrong ticket by the clerk, which she begrudgingly paid for. Turns out that clerk may have been an angel in disguise, because the mix-up lead to her winning $5 million!

Zaharov was running some errands when she decided to buy her usual $1 scratch ticket, but the clerk at her local grocery store accidentally handed her a $10 "Set For Life" ticket instead.

"When the clerk handed me the wrong ticket, I felt bad so I decided to just go ahead and buy it," Zaharov said in a release from the New York Lottery. "I actually used the ticket as a bookmark for a couple of weeks before I decided to scratch it."

Set For Life

Lo and behold, apparently good things come to those who wait: she won the jackpot.

"I never win anything," she said. "I was sure the ticket was fake."

Fox

Zaharov is now guaranteed to receive $5 million over the next 20 years, most of which will be in payments of $260,000, or $172,068 after taxes. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons!

What would you do with $5 million?