Man Buys Identical Lottery Tickets and Wins Twice

A North Carolina man is feeling very lucky...for being so forgetful. Per CNN, 49-year-old Scotty Thomas bought one of the state's Lucky for Life tickets online for $2 but later couldn't recall whether he'd done so or not. “I was just laying in bed watching a basketball game on TV and I couldn’t remember if I filled it out or not,” the dump truck operator told the North Carolina Lottery. "I went ahead and filled it out again." Only after receiving notice that he'd won two separate amounts did Thomas realize what he'd done.

Each of the tickets won $25,000 a year for life. Like many a lottery win, though, it came with a big choice: Thomas was forced to decide whether to take both prizes as annuities for a total of $50,000 per year, take one as an annuity and the other as a lump sum of $390,000, or take both as lump sums. Like most folks, including a heart surgery patient who found his initials on a ticket before winning a $1M prize, Thomas went with the lump sums. He says he plans to use the windfall to support his business, help out family, and buy a home. After taxes, he took home $551,851. (More lottery stories.)