I guess they call them “fortune” cookies for a reason. A North Carolina veteran’s life has changed forever after he won a Mega Millions Jack Pot by using the numbers given to him from his Fortune Cookie.
According to the North Carolina Education Lottery, Gabriel Fierro and his wife dine at the Red Bowl Asian Bistro located in Charlotte, North Carolina, roughly once a week. After the end of each meal the Red Bowl Bistro staff hand out fortune cookies to its customers but for Fierro the cookies not only offered him a proverbial phrase but an actual fortune too.
An Army veteran used numbers from his fortune cookie to play the lottery. He won $4 million. https://t.co/cHTigq07cy
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 3, 2022
Fierro stated he made the decision to play his fortune cookie numbers “on a whim,” and he ended up with the state’s greatest victory in the history of Online Play, according to Fierro.
NPR had more details on how Fiero hit the jackpot:
As the lottery explained in a blog post, Fierro bought his ticket using Online Play and added $1 to make it a Megaplier ticket (which would multiply any win). He matched all five white balls to win $1 million, which quadrupled to $4 million when the “4X Megaplier” hit. Fierro initially couldn’t believe his own luck.
“I got an email in the morning and I just stared at it dumbfounded,” he said. “I took it and showed it to my wife and she thought it was an April Fool’s joke or maybe a scam.”
As one would expect his reaction to receiving an email that he won millions left him speechless. Fierro stated he received an email in the morning and simply gazed at it dumbfounded. The army veteran thought the email was an April Fool’s prank or maybe a fraud, according to his wife, who accepted it and shared it with her friends.
That’s when it hit them, he added, and they fled around the home “shrieking like a bunch of banshees” in shock. Fierro accepted the award on Thursday, bringing home a total of $2,840,401 after deductions for taxes. Following his retirement as a handicapped combat veteran after serving 32 years in the Military, including tours of duty in Iraq, the 60-year-old said that he intends to put the majority of his awards into investments.
Whenever playing the lottery one must always be careful, according to NBC scammers have been on the horizon lately.
Scammers may try to use fraudulent accounts, fake phone calls, emails, texts and even social media messaging to try to take advantage of lottery players and even those not participating, lottery officials said.
The Lottery says it does not sell tickets online, by phone or via text messages. The agency does not call players to inform them that they won a prize, nor will a player be asked to pay fees or taxes up front to claim winnings.
Scammers might even target people who aren’t buying tickets, lottery officials said, but non-players cannot win a lottery prize, the agency says. If a person is contacted by a purported “lottery” representative informing that person of their winnings, but that person never purchased a ticket, it is a scam, the lottery says.
This isn’t the first time a North Carolina Man has won millions by playing Fortune Cookie numbers. Two years ago a man by the name of Charles W. Jackson Jr. won $344.6 million after playing his fortune cookies numbers too.
North Carolina retiree wins $344.6 million jackpot using fortune cookie numbers https://t.co/idSORtExY6 pic.twitter.com/37LIe1TDud
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 5, 2019
Next time you get a fortune cookie in North Carolina you might want to keep it around for a bit.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News
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