Man wins New Hampshire lottery with ticket sold in error

New York, Jan 2: A New Hampshire man is the winner of a $2.1 Megabucks lottery jackpot even though the lucky ticket wasn't the one he intended to buy.

Scott Bennett, 48, of Hillsborough, went into the Circle K convenience store on Dec. 19 and asked the clerk for one Tri-State Megabucks ticket and one Lucky for Life ticket. The clerk mistakenly sold him two Megabucks tickets.

He never got the Lucky for Life ticket, but that probably doesn't matter now, because one of the Megabucks tickets was a big winner.

At a press conference, the Bennett family - minus Scott, who was at work - appeared to accept the prize.

Cathy Bennett, Scott's 47-year-old wife, said this Christmas "there might be a few extra presents under the tree."

She described the experience as "surreal."

"It's very overwhelming but I think once everything settles we'll enjoy and take the time to enjoy it and decide what the future's going to hold," she said, according to ABC News affiliate WMUR TV in Manchester, N.H.

The Bennetts have three children. It was their son, Travis, 20, who set things in motion. He left a note saying a winning ticket had been sold in their neighborhood and urging his father to check the numbers on his ticket.

"I went downstairs, and he was sitting there with the ticket in one hand and the New Hampshire Lottery website on the computer, just staring at both of them," Cathy Bennett said, recalling her husband at the computer. "We must have checked them about 15 times. We really truly didn't believe it."

When they found out they'd won, they called a family meeting and ordered in Chinese food.

The Bennetts opted to take the lump sum payment of about $1.3 million, and will use it to pay down debt, remodel the kitchen in their recently purchased Victorian home and fund their children's college education.

Scott Bennett works in property management and his wife is an elementary school paraprofessional, the Union Leader newspaper reported. They both plan to keep their jobs.

As it turns out, the Bennetts weren't the only lucky ones.

The Circle K receives $21,500 for selling the winning ticket, and the owner plans to share some of the money with his workers, including Nicki Gee, the 24-year-old clerk who sold the ticket.

"He (Bennett) came in yesterday to thank me and said I had made a very good mistake," she said.

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