Turning $10 into $1 million? Now that's a head-scratcher.
The California Lottery is celebrating Guillermo Cuevas of San Diego for doing just that.
Cuevas won small on a $10 ticket, then used the winnings to buy a scratcher at Newport Liquor on Beyer Boulevard in Otay Mesa West. That small gamble turned into a life-changing fortune fitting for a man with decades' worth of attempts under his fingernails.
“I’ve played California Lottery games since the very beginning. I still remember purchasing $1 tickets in 1985,” Cuevas told the California Lottery. “The amazing part of this story is that I bought the winning ticket with the prize from another ticket I bought earlier that day.”
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
Cuevas walked away with $999,990 in profit before his meeting with Uncle Sam, and Newport Market got in on the action with a $5,000 bonus.
The California Lottery says the odds of winning $1 million on a "Winter Bucks" scratcher Cuevas played are 1 in more than 2 million.
We're not sure when Cuevas bought his ticket, but another San Diego lottery player won a nice chunk of change on Wednesday. They matched five numbers on the SuperLotto Plus drawing, but missed out on the Mega number. Coming closed earned them a cool $29,037.
There were no tickets sold with all six numbers and the estimated jackpot for Saturday's drawing will grow to $10 million, the California Lottery announced.
The odds of matching all five numbers and the Mega number is 1 in 41,416,353, according to the California Lottery.
California
News from across California
