Winning the lottery is a pretty cool experience but what if it didn’t cost you a single cent to do so? A Kentucky woman managed to win $175,050 from scratch-off lottery tickets that she received as part of a gift exchange at a company holiday party.
Lori Janes told Kentucky Lottery officials that she participated in a white elephant gift exchange with her co-workers from the Harmon Dental Center. When she lost her first pick, a $25 TJ Maxx gift card, she ended up with $25 worth of scratch-off lottery tickets.
“Once it got to me, it was done and mine to keep. That’s when everyone was telling me to scratch them off,” Janes said. The first ticket turned out to be a pretty good start, winning Janes a $50 prize. The second turned out to be even better.
On a $10 Hit The Jackpot ticket, Janes won a $175,000 top prize. “Everyone was going insane. People were getting their calculators out and double-checking. A couple of people even scanned the ticket on the lottery’s app, just to make sure,” Janes said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a $25 gift exchange and I won $175,000!”
Janes called her family but they were initially skeptical about the win. “We figured she didn’t look at it right but then we heard people in the background celebrating, it became real,” the winner’s husband said.
The winner confirmed that she is planning on using the prize money to pay off her daughter’s student loans and her family’s cars.