Man wins NC lottery jackpot as mom’s maiden name appears on ticket. ‘Had to be fate’
.jpg "The man kept scratching off numbers until he was staring at a jackpot — and his mom’s name. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)")
When Steven Richter scratched off the final winning number from his ticket in North Carolina, he was convinced it was no coincidence.
The final number was his mom’s maiden name, he told lottery officials, and it won him $100,000.
“The winning number that I had was ‘six’ and that’s my mother’s maiden name,” Richter explained to lottery officials. “It had to be fate.”
Richter, a 53-year-old Jackson Spring resident, bought a $30 200x The Cash scratch-off ticket at the Speedway on N.C. 5 in Aberdeen, according to lottery officials. When he first started scratching off the ticket, he told officials he thought he had snagged a $100 win.
But the zeroes kept coming.
After Richter realized his win, he called his wife.
“I told her to guess how much I won,” Richter said. “She still can’t believe it.”
Richter brought home $71,019 after taxes, according to lottery officials. He said that he would use the winnings to pay bills and put money toward his daughter’s college education in the future, lottery officials said.
“I guess it just happened to be my time,” Richter told lottery officials.
Aberdeen is 72 miles southwest of Raleigh.
