A South Auckland woman has claimed a $500,000 Lotto win after finding a forgotten bonus ticket that was left in a zipped pocket in her handbag.<\/p>\n
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was contacted by Lotto last week in relation to a First Division prize from May 31, 2025.<\/p>\n
“I got a call, asking if I had bought a ticket around that time and whether I might have any old ones lying around,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I had noticed some tickets in my bag a few days before but assumed I had already checked them and thought no more about them.”<\/p>\n
She rummaged around in her bag, and rediscovered the tickets, one being the First Division winner.<\/p>\n
“The person on the phone read out the winning numbers as I checked them on my ticket \u2013 I had all six and she asked me if I knew what that meant \u2013 but I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when she told me that matching six Lotto numbers was a First Division prize, and the prize for that draw was $500,000 \u2013 I didn\u2019t know what to say \u2013 I was absolutely speechless and almost in tears.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the call, she told her husband what had happened. Together, they opened the MyLotto app and were greeted by a “major prize” message.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s when he started to believe it was true and tucked it into his wallet for safe keeping.”<\/p>\n
She then joked to her husband: “Hey, what\u2019s wrong with keeping it in my bag? It\u2019s been safe there for months.”<\/p>\n
The woman had taken the handbag on an overseas holiday while the winning ticket was unknowingly in there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been everywhere with me for the past few months, even on an overseas holiday. I can\u2019t believe I was basically carrying around a bag with $500,000 in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call this my magic bag now,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n
The couple said they were planning to buy their first home with the money.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis changes everything for us \u2013 it means we can buy our first home, and I just don\u2019t have words for how that feels,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
How Lotto NZ tracked the woman down<\/p>\n
Lotto NZ said it began working behind the scenes using electronic transaction records to find the woman after the winning ticket went unclaimed for more than a month.<\/p>\n
Lotto NZ head of corporate communications Will Hine said: “When the woman claimed her bonus ticket, she also bought another ticket using a card, and that card was registered to a MyLotto account, which had a phone number listed.<\/p>\n
“That gave us enough information to reach out and ask some questions \u2013 and luckily, she still had the ticket.”<\/p>\n
Hine said if the woman had lost her ticket, Lotto NZ would have undertaken a “full investigation” to confirm ownership.<\/p>\n
“We’re really happy to know that this prize is going to make such a difference in their lives, helping them into their first home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Auckland woman has claimed a $500,000 Lotto win after finding a forgotten bonus ticket that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[51,138,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-91744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-auckland","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}