Michigan Woman Finds $3 Million Lottery Prize While Checking Her Spam Folder

When was the last time you checked your spam folder? Turns out, a woman's sudden urge to scroll through her junk mails made her a millionaire.

Laura Spears, 55, from Oakland County, Michigan, discovered that she won a lottery jackpot worth $3 million while she was checking her junk e-mails, CNN reported. The lucky winner bought a Mega Millions ticket on the Michigan Lottery website on Dec. 31, 2021. She won a $1 million prize. Thanks to the Megaplier, the prize was multiplied to $3 million.

"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," Spears told Michigan Lottery officials. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account."

"That’s when I saw an email from the Lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It’s all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million!" she added.

Spears, who claimed the prize money last week, said she plans to share it with her family and retire early. Spears also vowed to check her spam folder regularly. "I definitely added the Michigan Lottery to my safe senders list just in case I ever get lucky enough to receive another email about a huge prize," she said.

Spears' story is a testament that luck strikes us when we are least expecting it.

In a similar incident, a 51-year-old grandmother from Toronto was over the moon when she learned that she won a $40 million lottery instead of what she thought was $40,000.

Maria Carreiro, a Portuguese immigrant and former factory worker, cried a little and danced a little when she claimed her prize money from the Ontario Lottery. At first, she thought she won $40,000 and was completely satisfied. It was when her daughter checked her winning numbers online, they realized that the winning amount was 1,000 times what they initially read.