A Willard man turned a trash disaster into a windfall after realizing he had thrown away a winning scratch-off ticket and digging it back out before the garbage was collected. The Ohio Lottery ticket, a Bingo 25 Times 25 game bought at the Circle K on Walton Street in Willard, ended up being worth $100,000.
That is the kind of mistake that can erase a payday in an instant, which is why the recovery matters as much as the win itself. The man said he panicked when he realized the ticket had wound up in the trash, and that he had to go dumpster diving to retrieve it.
He had every reason to worry. A discarded ticket is just paper if it cannot be found in time, and this one was sitting in a trash pile until he got to it before the garbage was hauled away. Once recovered, the ticket was checked and confirmed as a $100,000 winner, turning what looked like a loss into a major Ohio Lottery $100000 Prize.
The payout came with a catch. After required tax withholdings, the Willard resident took home $73,250, a reminder that even a jackpot on paper arrives smaller once the tax man is done. The prize was claimed after the ticket was verified, and the episode left one unanswered question: what a man does after nearly losing a small fortune in the trash.
