A Nebraska man won an $81,000 Ford truck this week, months after he tossed aside a $2 scratch-off lottery ticket! “I was cleaning out my glove box,” Lucas Swarthout told Nebraska lottery officials. “I was looking for a VIN number on my other vehicle and found the ticket in there unscratched.”
The lucky man purchased the winning Truck$ & Buck$ Scratch game ticket at a Kwik Stop #01 at 120 South Jeffers St. in North Platte, lottery officials said. On Monday, Swarthout collected his 2023 Ford F-150 XLT 4×4 Crew Cab Flex Fuel truck at the same Kwik Stop.
The North Platte man told lottery officials that he rarely plays the scratch-off game, but that he had a good feeling about winning and went for it. Then, he promptly forgot about it.
Luckily for Swarthout, the ticket was not yet set to expire, according to Neil Watson, marketing and communications specialist for the Nebraska Lottery. “It’s still an active game,” Watson tells PEOPLE, adding that Swarthout won the seventh out of eight trucks in the lottery.
Once the eighth truck is won, the game will “close,” and the winner then has 180 days to claim his or her prize, Watson says. Believe it or not, Swarthout was actually unsure about accepting the truck once he realized he won the game.
However, after lottery officials told him they’d cover roughly $25,000 of the taxes and registration fees, he was more than happy to take it home. “That just makes it better,” Swarthout said. “When you find out there’s no financial strings attached to it.”