An unlucky guy was told that his $500,000 win from the lottery was a total fake

One retired air conditioner repairman was extremely elated and then extremely frustrated when the scratch card he thought had netted him $500,000 turned out to be a misprint.

John Wines paid $20 for his ticket and was extremely happy when he scratched off the number 1 of it, which meant he had won $250,000. So when he scratched off another 1 he was in seventh heaven. The retired Mr. Wines called officials at New Mexico Lottery to find out how to collect his prize. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the answer he was looking for. The lottery officials told him he hadn’t hit the jackpot at all, because of a misprint error on the ticket. It turned out there was something wrong with the printer which had smudged the digits 2 and 8 in the numbers 12 and 18, making the numbers look like two 1s. It turned out all the misprinted tickets were pulled from sale, but somehow the organization had missed one – the one Mr. Wines had bought.

The lottery apologized for the mistake and offered Mr. Wines $100 worth of lottery tickets. Mr. Wines said that he isn’t planning to sue the New Mexico Lottery, although he found the situation quite stressful and frustrating.