Army vet learns someone hit lottery jackpot — then realizes it was him. ‘Unbelievable’
A retired Army sergeant learned someone hit the jackpot — then he realized it was him.
“It was unbelievable,” veteran Christopher Leydic told the Virginia Lottery. “I thought, ‘Is this real?’”
The nearly $1 million win was the real deal, and it came after Leydic played the lottery online. He tried his luck on a ticket for Cash 5 with EZ Match, a drawing game with tickets that start at $1, lottery officials wrote in a news release and on their website.
Leydic noticed the jackpot prize went down, an indication that someone scored big in the Aug. 17 drawing.
“Oh, somebody won it,” Leydic said.
Leydic soon learned he was the person who beat 1-in-1.2 million odds to match all the numbers picked in the drawing. He won $958,740, though lottery officials didn’t reveal the total prize amount after taxes.
Now Leydic, who served in the military for 21 years, hopes to spend his prize money on bills and put some into savings. He is from Chester, a roughly 15-mile drive south from Richmond.
It’s not the first time a lottery player didn’t realize they won at first. In North Carolina, another winner thought someone else hit the jackpot, but it was actually him, McClatchy News reported in 2022.
This story was originally published August 21, 2024 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Army vet learns someone hit lottery jackpot — then realizes it was him. ‘Unbelievable’."
