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While lottery fever is currently at an all-time high, Oksana Zaharov won her pot of gold by accident. The New Jersey native was out shopping in Manhattan when she stopped into Trisha Convenience to buy a $1 scratch-off ticket. Instead, the clerk handed her a $10 Set for Life ticket. Zaharov bought it because she happened to have some extra cash on her.
“When the clerk handed me the wrong ticket I felt bad, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. I actually used the ticket as a bookmark for a couple weeks before I decided to scratch it,” the 46-year-old said in a recent press release.
Once the mother of two finally did scratch it, she found out she’d been $5 million richer all along. “I never win anything. I was sure the ticket was fake. It wasn’t until I brought it into the office that I knew it was for real,” she stated.
Zaharov skipped the lump sum and chose to break up the payments. That means she’ll see a payout of $260,000 ($172,068 after taxes) for 19 years along with another payment of $60,000 ($39,708 after taxes). In addition, she’ll also wind up getting an annual payment of $172,068 for the rest of her life. Zaharov says she is going to take her family to the Bahamas and cover the cost of her children’s education.
Safe to say her little bit of extra cash wound up netting her a lot extra.
Source: NJ.com
