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Father goes out for milk, comes home with $1M lottery ticket

A father near Richmond, Virginia got a huge surprise right around Christmas after deciding to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket during a run to the store.
Credit: Virginia Lottery

WASHINGTON — A Virginia father who stopped by a 7-Eleven convenience store to buy his kids some chocolate milk, also bought a scratch-off lottery ticket and wound up winning $1 million

Dennis Willoughby of Chesterfield County, an area near Virginia's capital city of Richmond, bought the ticket just before Christmas. 

He decided to buy the ticket on a whim while he was in the store.

The Virginia Lottery said Willoughby chose a one-time cash option of $640,205, instead of the other option of annual payments over 30 years. Both of those amounts are before taxes, lottery officials said and the cash option is not a tax withholding. 

There was still one more unclaimed top-prize winner in the '$1 million Platinum Jackpot game lottery officials said. The odds of winning it are 1 in 1,632,000.

Credit: Virginia Lottery

While Willoughby hit it big with his $1 million scratch-off ticket, there's an even bigger lottery prize up for grabs currently through Powerball. Monday's jackpot is at $522 million and could get larger when the numbers are selected. The cash option is $371.5 million. 

The chance of winning all that money is minuscule at one in 292.2 million. The odds of winning in general are 1 in 24.9. It's not uncommon to have months go by without a grand prize winner.

The last time someone hit jackpot was Oct. 4 in California, winning $699.8 million. That jackpot was the seventh largest in U.S. lottery history and fifth largest in Powerball history.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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