Hidden riches..
Revealed... the wacky places folk keep lucky tickets
Numbers came up for Cobh’s Vincent Keaney
Officials at Lotto HQ have heard some weird and wacky stories over the years when it comes to secretly stashing bumper jackpot slips.
Some of the most common hiding places include the back of picture frames, underneath floorboards, under a pillow and behind the wardrobe.
Lotto spokeswoman Miriam Donohoe said: “We always advise our winners to mind their tickets as they are valuable pieces of paper.
“But a few of them take it to the extreme. Some sensible winners take the ticket to their bank for safe keeping. Others take a different view entirely.”
Last December, a woman who played a syndicate ticket for a €5.3million jackpot literally went to the wire by stashing it in a cup of her sports bra.
She waited six weeks before retrieving the slip from her underwear, hidden in the back of her wardrobe, and collecting the cheque.
Miriam added: “This was one of the most uplifting stories to come from the National Lottery winners’ room in a while.
“We had another lady in 2016 who hid the ticket in her fridge. When she presented it at Lotto HQ it had gone completely white because of the chemicals used in the refrigeration process.
“Luckily in this case the ticket had already been verified and the money was paid out.
“On the other end of the temperature scale a winner decided to iron their crumpled winning ticket but the heat from the iron caused it to go completely black.
“Again in this case it had already been verified and the money was paid out.”
Last year a Westmeath family who shared a €12.3million jackpot stored the ticket in a gun cabinet in their home. Another winner told bemused officials he had hidden the ticket in his dog kennel because he reckoned that nobody would get past his Rottweiler. Miriam said: “Some years ago a winner presented themselves. In the winners’ room he One winner kept slip in his pet Rottweiler’s kennel took off his shoe, then his sock, and revealed a piece of tin foil with the golden ticket wrapped inside.”
In We Won the Lotto, which starts on RTE tomorrow, a handful of millionaire winners give first-hand accounts of how Carmel and Billy Comer
Ticket was hidden in a cistern
Woman kept winning syndicate ticket hidden in her sports bra Lucky Westmeath family kept jackpot winning ticket in gun cabinet
Slip bleached in a fridge
Windfall transformed the life of Jim Carroll and his family
the cash windfall changed their lives.
The documentary features Billy and Carmel Comer from Galway, Christine Coady from Waterford and Vincent Keaney from Cobh, Co Cork.
Army paramedic Jim Carroll also tells how his €500,000 win transformed life on the Curragh for him and his wife Carmel and their seven children.
But psychologist Brian Roche of NUI Maynooth warns that while money does seem to make most people happier, it doesn’t transform lives overnight.
We Won The Lotto, RTE One, Monday at 9.35pm.
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MIRIAM DONOH0E LOTTERY SPOKESWOMAN