Michigan woman checks spam folder and learns she won the lottery

A woman in Michigan checked her spam email folder – and found out she had won a $3m lottery prize.

“I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket,” Laura Spears, 55 and from Oakland county, said in a release from the Michigan Lottery.

“A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account.

“That’s when I saw an email from the lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my lottery account to confirm the message in the email.

“It’s all still so shocking to me that I really won $3m.”

Spears in fact won $1m on her original ticket but had paid another $1 to add a “Megaplier”, a gambit the Michigan Lottery said can multiply prizes up to five times.

Spears said she will retire earlier than planned, and will share her winnings with family members.

She also said she had “added the Michigan Lottery to my safe senders list just in case I ever get lucky enough to receive another email about a huge prize”.

The lottery operator was keen to emphasize that a huge prize is now on offer in the Mega Millions draw, which operates in 45 US states, Washington DC and the US Virgin Islands.

“The Mega Millions jackpot was last won on 22 October 2021,” the operator said, “when a family in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, won $108m. The current jackpot stands at $376m.”