A SOUTH African man almost missed out on a mammoth £4.9 million lottery jackpot after he refused to take a call from an unknown number.
The man, whose identity has not been revealed, said he would continue to work in the financial industry, despite becoming a millionaire overnight this week.
The Pretoria winner spent R150 – the equivalent of £7.42 – on a Powerball lottery ticket online through the First National Bank (FNB) app before manually choosing his numbers.
But when the FNB tried to contact him the next morning, he ignored the call, thinking it was a telemarketing company trying to hawk a service or product.
He eventually picked up his phone, he realised he had won the R100 million (£4.9 million) jackpot, as FNB bank officials checked his bank details while on the phone.
“I was excited, extremely happy. I have been playing the lottery games since my university days, so it has been many years, and this is the first time I won any jackpot,” the man said.
“People need to understand that the odds of winning the lottery are very high, you will never know when it will be your turn to win, now I know that winning is possible.”
Despite his new found fortune, the winner has no plans to quit his job.
“I have no plans to make big changes to my lifestyle, everything will still be normal, perhaps I may just buy a car and a house only,” he explained.
“I do plan on paying off debt and investing the rest of the money.”
The CEO of Ithuba National Lottery, Charmaine Mabuza, congratulated the winner, and said all prizewinners of £2,437 and over are given trauma counselling.
Earlier this month, we revealed the world’s biggest unclaimed lottery jackpots, from a Brit who missed a multimillion prize to a doctor who “lost his winning ticket”.
The largest unclaimed EuroMillions lottery prize – £64 million – is from the UK, after a lucky person bought the ticket in the Stevenage and Hitchin area of Hertfordshire.
As the days went by, billboards were erected and appeals were made to locate the winner, but the £64million jackpot expired on December 5, 2012, after the six months limit.
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