Lottery seller scours bins for US$1.5m golden ticket
Print Edition
A LOTTERY ticket vendor spent a frenetic hour searching through bags of trash on Saturday after realizing he had thrown away his customer’s 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) jackpot winning ticket.
The man, surnamed Fan, said he has been selling tickets to the lucky winner from his booth near the Hongkou Football Stadium for about four years.
“He’s often away on business, so I print off the tickets and hold on to them for him,” he told Shanghai Daily yesterday.
“He spends about 300 yuan a week and settles up when I see him. He trusts me and I trust him,” he said.
Last week, however, Fan realized he had put that trust in deep jeopardy.
“I got a text message from the district lottery office on Saturday telling me I had sold a jackpot winning ticket,” he said.
“As soon as I saw the numbers I knew they were the ones my customer had asked me to put on for him.”
Fan said he can’t remember exactly how the ticket ended up in the rubbish bin, but as soon as the text came in he got a sinking feeling and knew exactly what he had to do.
“I was stupefied. I realized that the tickets had gone in the trash and that the trash had gone to the dumpsters,” he said.
“I rushed round there and was delighted when I saw the dumpsters were still full. Thank goodness it had been raining on Friday, otherwise the delivery trucks would have come and emptied them,” he said.
“I just dived in and started searching through the rubbish bags. It took me over an hour, but I found the tickets in the end.”
Fan didn’t say if he had spoken with his customer since his win, but the lucky punter was quoted on the website of the Shanghai Sports Lottery Administration as saying he “never expected too much from buying lottery tickets.”
He probably never expected so much from the man who sold him the tickets either.
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