A US Army veteran who found an old lottery ticket while doing his laundry and who was about to throw it away was shocked when it turned out to be a winning ticket worth USD 387,450.

The incident took place in Hampton, which is a city in the state of Virginia, located in the eastern United States.

The Virginia Lottery said in a statement released on Friday 10th December that the winner, who they named as Maricus “Bezo” Barnes, had been doing his laundry when he came across an old “Cash 5 with EZ Match” ticket from the Virginia Lottery.

Barnes said: “I was about to throw it away but then I decided to check it because it might be worth a few bucks.”

And it turned out that the endeavour was worthwhile because the ticket is worth USD 387,450 (GBP 292,500), according to the Virginia Lottery.

The Virginia Lottery said: “Mr Barnes matched all five winning numbers in the October 23 drawing to win the game’s jackpot. He bought the winning ticket at the 7-Eleven at 8531 Orcutt Avenue in Hampton.”

They added: “The winning numbers were 6-18-20-22-24. He used Easy Pick and allowed the computer to select the numbers on his ticket at random.”

Barnes, who now works as a shipyard worker after leaving the U.S. Army, reportedly said that he had “no immediate plans” for his winnings.

The Virginia Lottery explained that the “Cash 5 with EZ Match features a rolling jackpot, starting at a minimum of USD 100,000. If nobody matches all five winning numbers, the jackpot increases for the next drawing. The odds of matching all five numbers to win the jackpot are 1 in 749,398.”

Only a short while ago at the start of the month (December) another US man won USD 1 million after he opened a get well card from a friend following open-heart surgery to find a lottery ticket inside, with the winning combination of letters spelling out “heart”.

The winner was named by the Massachusetts State lottery as Alexander McLeish, from the city of Attleboro in Bristol County, Massachusetts, in the United States.

The state lottery said that he won a USD-1-million (GBP-750,000) prize in the Massachusetts State Lottery’s “USD 5,000,000 100X Cashword” instant ticket game.

They added that McLeish had received a get well card from a friend with three instant lottery tickets inside it. The lottery company said: “As he began to scratch the ‘Your Letters’ area of the ticket, the first three letters revealed were A, W and M, his initials.

“As if that wasn’t enough of a positive omen, the word that appeared on the bottom row of his winning puzzle was ‘HEART.'”