A woman in North Carolina did something very strange to keep her $1 million lottery ticket safe until she could cash it in: she put it under her bed.
A spokesperson for the NC Education Lottery said that Arely Mayorga Martinez, who lives in Charlotte, said that her husband recently bought a $10 Multiplier Mania ticket at the Shopton Commons BP on Steele Creek Road and brought it home for her to scratch. She found out she had won one of the top $1 million prizes in the game when she did.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing ,” she stated.
Martinez told the lottery officials that she put the lucky ticket under her bed to keep it safe until she could claim her win.
She said, “We hid it under our mattress.”
Martinez picked up her prize at the lottery offices on Thursday, September 5. She could have gotten her win as a $50,000 payment every year for 20 years, or she could have gotten it all at once for $600,000.
She picked the second option and got a total of $429,003 after all the state and federal taxes were taken out. Lottery officials say she plans to buy a house with the money she won, which is finally her dream come true.
“We are so happy,” she told him.
The lotto site says that Multiplier Mania started in June 2023 and has six $1 million grand prizes. Now that Martinez has won, there is only one prize left to be collected.