The zeros just kept adding up
Montreal couple hid winning $55-million ticket in daughter’s toy box
Initially, Nathalie Langlais thought her winning lottery ticket was worth $55.
Then she saw three more zeros on her smartphone.
“I said, ‘$55,000, that’s impossible!’” Langlais told a news conference at Loto-Quebec headquarters Monday, three days after the Lotto Max draw. But then she saw three more. “I said, ‘I’m dead! I’m going to go crazy.’ I ran to my husband to see what’s going on, to see if I’m crazy.”
She was indeed sane — and she and her spouse, Gilles Rosnen, were $55 million richer.
Langlais and Rosnen said they hid the winning ticket in their daughter’s toy box over the weekend.
She said she doesn’t play the lottery often and that she rarely checks her ticket quickly after the results are known.
“I don’t know what happened to me but first thing in the morning on Saturday I decided to double-check the ticket on my phone,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Wow, $55!’
“I didn’t understand what was going on because the lovely music was playing that we all like.”
Langlais said she went upstairs to see Rosnen and told him she was “flipping out.”
They then placed the ticket in the toy box, which they had recently cleared out.
Langlais, 52, works in communications and said she doesn’t intend on leaving work just yet.
“I love my work, I never thought of leaving in the short term and I have contracts to finish,” she said. “I said to my boss: ‘I’m not saying bye-bye, but I won’t be at work on Monday.’”
She said she plans to spend the money on her extended family and on vacations.
Loto-Quebec said the couple has been buying lottery tickets at the same convenience store for several years.
“We’re kind of (living) in a parallel world,” Langlais said.