Lottery, Doh! | featured news

It’s a lottery nightmare: You decide not to kick in for the office Powerball pool — and your coworkers strike it rich. It happened at a real estate agency in Florida. Jennifer Maldonado, who started working at the firm two weeks ago and had yet to receive a paycheck, opted out of the $20 buy-in because she was watching her money. She showed up for work Sunday to find the rest of the office screaming, hugging and crying.

Two Kansas brothers were lucky -- then, not so lucky -- and then fortunate again, after they both survived an explosion that destroyed their house. The Wichita Eagle reports that two brothers were partying together to celebrate a $75,000 winning lottery ticket, when they accidentally blew up their Wichita home. Neither of the brother's names has been reported.

An Arkansas woman who cashed a $1 million lottery ticket may have to give up the winnings to a woman who threw away the ticket after she bought it, according to a judge's ruling Tuesday.

A mother-of-seven who claimed she was one of the winners of the $656 million Mega Millions lottery told NBC News on Thursday that she has lost the ticket. Mirlande Wilson, 37, claims she bought the winning ticket at a 7-Eleven in Baltimore, but so far none of the three winners -- the two others were in Illinois and Kansas -- has actually come forward to claim the money.

Beware of too much good luck, warns a classic Greek myth – a lesson that a Michigan woman who won a $1-million state lottery jackpot has learned the hard way. Michigan’s Department of Human Services has cut off $200 a month in food aid to Amanda Clayton in the wake of media reports that she had won $1 million in the state lottery in September. To make matters worse for Clayton, who lives in Lincoln Park near Detroit, her case has been turned over to state anti-fraud officials.

A New York convenience store clerk refused to hand back an elderly man’s winning $14 million Lotto ticket, the New York Post reported Saturday. Milledge McCassell, 72, went to lottery vendor Dynasty Deli and Grocery to check his $2 ticket Aug. 26 and "Big Winner!" flashed on the electronic scanner available to customers.

A lottery winner who was struck and killed by a car in northern Ohio on the day she got her check had just spent some of the money on wedding rings for her and her husband.