The odds of matching the first five Powerball numbers are one in nearly 12 million, but a city of Clearwater City Council Member commissioner did it. The problem was, he didn’t realize he was given back the wrong ticket until after he left the Publix store.
After the lottery machine indicated that the ticket was a winner for a prize above $600, the store clerk indicated that he would have to take the ticket to a lottery office. However, the clerk then handed him the wrong ticket and threw the winning ticket in the trash.
After arriving at his house and seeing the ticket in his possession was not a winning ticket, the man quickly drove back to the Publix and retrieved the actual winning ticket from a trash can where it was erroneously thrown out. Luckily, this story has a happy ending in that the winning ticket netted $760,000 after taxes.
