Close call

Ignacio Gonzalez, a lucky Spaniard in the country’s Basque region, had a close call this week when he had to scramble to find lottery tickets worth Euro 9 million that he had dumped, mistakenly believing that they were not winners.
Gonzalez is part of a syndicate of 14 who regularly buy lotto tickets together on the understanding that any wins will be split equally among the members. Gonzalez held the tickets, but only discovered after throwing them away that the big win was among them.
When he discovered that the winning number – 48104 – was in the batch, Gonzalez panicked, he told a local radio station. He unsuccessfully ransacked his home looked for the missing piece of paper, now worth a fortune, before desperately emptying the communal rubbish bins and sifting through the contents.
To his relief, he found the missing ticket and the syndicate was able to make a distribution of Euro 600 000 to each member.
A relieved Gonzalez told the radio station that he feared his syndicate partners would “crucify” him had he mislaid the once-in-a-lifetime win.

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