Couple dealt crushing blow after thinking they'd won £82k on the lottery
Imagine thinking you'd won the lottery and you were going to be quids in, only to find out that it wasn't real.
That's what happened to one gutted couple when they thought they'd hit the $100,000 (£80,000) jackpot, only to realise they'd fallen at a rather strict hurdle. Daydreaming about what you'd do with a huge sum of money isn't uncommon. You might go travelling for the year, put a deposit down on a flat you were eyeing up, or maybe just buy yourself a whole new wardrobe - the possibilities are endless.
But the couple were brought back down to earth with a bang in 2023 when they realised that the scratch card they'd won the money with had actually expired five days earlier.
As previously reported by the Prince George Citizen, Dan and Cerise Lewis, who live in Prince George, in the Canadian province of British Columbia, had been tidying up their bedroom when they came across a box of 'odds and ends' left over from Christmas.
Amid the random bits and bobs, the couple found a two-player Clue scratch game. Cerise suggested they give it a go, never imagining they'd end up winning a huge amount. Dan told the publication: "We went through the game and there are icons that tell you the weapon, the room, and the suspect just like the board game. We get to the end of the game, and it reveals who the murder was and she says 'I got all three of those symbols' and I was like 'What? No way'."
Woman was 'adamant' she would win top lottery prize - then pockets $200,000
To his initial delight, Dan checked the ticket over and discovered Cerise had indeed scratched all three symbols, which meant they'd just won an £82,000 ($100,000) prize. Unfortunately, their excitement didn't last long. After grabbing her phone to check the ticket via the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) app, Cerise realised that it had expired just five days before.
Remaining hopeful, the pair rang up BCLC to enquire as to whether there was any chance of a grace period, explaining the situation and the sizeable amount at stake. After being briefly placed on hold, the operator informed Dan and Cerise that 'if the ticket was expired, it was expired', with no apparent leeway, leaving the pair gutted.
The couple even tried checking the ticket at a shop despite what the operator had told them, but it just came up as expired once again. He continued: "When we first saw that we won $100,000 we thought wow this is going to take care of all of our problems! We will be out of debt, this and that, and then of course a couple minutes later we were devastated to find out that we won absolutely nothing."
Going forward, Dan is now urging others not to wait to check their tickets to avoid any similarly crushing disappointments, as the pair are devastated to have missed out on such a massive amount of money.
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