Cavan Family Scoops €4.5 Million with Irish Lotto Ticket Left in the Car
Last Updated: Monday 9th January 2017, 10:50 am
A family from Bailieborough, Co Cavan, picked up an incredible €4.5 million in the Christmas Eve Irish Lotto draw with a ticket they left lying around in their car.
It’s easily done: you buy a ticket for the weekend Lotto while you’re out shopping, slip it in your bag, wallet or coat and then forget all about it. But what if that ticket turned out to be worth a real fortune?
It wasn’t until Christmas Day that a family from Bailieborough realised that the Irish Lotto ticket they had left on the dashboard of their car was worth just over €4.5 million.
“We were driving home on Christmas morning when my son told me that the local shop had sold a winning Lotto ticket,” the jackpot family father said. “He was able to tell me that it was a Quick Pick ticket and I suddenly realised that I had a Lotto ticket in the car.”
Having purchased their own ticket from the same shop the night before, the pair quickly located it inside the car before checking their numbers on the boy’s phone.
“A message came up to tell us to contact the National Lottery so we still didn’t know if we were the winners,” the happy dad told reporters. “We got home just before the Christmas dinner and I got my son to get the winning Lotto numbers on his computer. He called them out to me, one by one and before he even finished, we knew we had hit the jackpot, the place went absolutely mad.”
The family travelled to the Lotto headquarters in Dublin last Friday to collect their prize: an eye-watering €4,577,663.
“It was a fantastic Christmas,” the father said. “The whole family were at home and we had even more reason to celebrate with our Lotto win.”
The family are planning to invite their friends and neighbours to join them in celebrations at some point over the next few weeks — just as soon as they have had chance to let the reality of their gigantic win sink in.
