With a mountain of bills and facing eviction, a suburban Chicago man suddenly found financial salvation with a lottery ticket he had bought months ago and that his wife recently discovered in a cookie jar in the kitchen.
On Wednesday, the Illinois Lottery handed Ricardo Cerezo of Geneva a large commemorative check for $4.85 million — the result of matching all six numbers in the Feb. 2 Lotto drawing, The Associated Press reported.
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Cerezo says his wife found 11 Lotto tickets while cleaning the kitchen and told him to see if any were worth anything. Cerezo had bought the tickets at an area convenience store, put them in the cookie jar, and forgot about them.
He took the tickets to a nearby gas station to scan them on a lottery machine. It was then he discovered he had won.
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