Virginia lottery player shocked after finding winning Mega Millions ticket in nightstand

A Virginia woman became a millionaire after she recently discovered a weeks-old lottery ticket sitting inside her nightstand.

Portsmouth resident Melena Hill purchased a Mega Millions lottery ticket ahead of the Jan. 9 drawing at the Murphy USA gas station in Suffolk, according to a press release from the Virginia Lottery. The winning numbers were 12-15-32-33-53, with the sixth Mega Ball number being 24.

Hill used numbers that were randomly selected by the computer that she purchased the ticket on, according to the press release.

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While she didn’t hit the Mega Ball number, Hill did spend an extra dollar on her ticket that ended up going very far, lottery officials explained.

“That would normally win a $1 million prize,” the press release said. “However, she spent an extra dollar for the Megaplier when she bought the ticket.”

“That extra buck tripled her prize to $3 million.”

Hill told lottery officials that she was in extreme shock after she found out that her five-week-old lottery ticket was worth millions.

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“My stomach had butterflies. I screamed a little bit!” she said.

Virginia Lottery officials said that the chances of matching the first five numbers in a Mega Millions drawing are 1 in 12,607,306.

Had Hill selected the winning Mega Ball number, she would have beat odds of 1 in 302,575,350.

Lottery officials explained that the state of Virginia uses lottery profits to fund Old Dominion’s education system.

“All Virginia Lottery profits go to K-12 education in Virginia. Ms. Hill lives in Portsmouth, which received more than $16.4 million in Lottery funds for K-12 education last fiscal year,” Virginia Lottery’s website states. “In Fiscal Year 2023, the Lottery raised more than $867 million for K-12 education, making up approximately 10 percent of Virginia’s total K-12 school budget.”

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