Local convenience store sells $2.5 million lottery ticket

Mar. 26—One lucky Glynn County resident is $2.5 million richer after taking a chance on a $20 lottery ticket.

The owners of Vansh Corner at the intersection of Community Road and Old Jesup Road in Brunswick were as surprised as the customer they sold one of the three winning Hot Millions scratch-offs to last month.

Krunal and Roshani Patel, a married couple who run the convenience store, sell upwards of $3,000 worth of lottery tickets a day.

Feb. 18 was shaping up to be a pretty normal run on tickets, Krunal Patel said. That was until the evening, when a customer, whose name they do not know, bought the last $20 Hot Millions ticket on the roll.

The last ticket is typically the undesirable one, Roshani Patel said. She's not sure why, but it can take days to sell the last scratch-off.

She figures most assume that all the winning tickets are gone by that point and it's unlikely the last will be lucky.

The customer who bought the last Hot Millions certainly didn't expect to walk away with a ticket worth a small fortune, she said. In fact, he didn't even bother scratching off all the numbers.

He is a loyal customer, and the Patels encouraged him to check the last few.

"He didn't believe it," Roshani Patel said. "We didn't believe it. We had to go through the numbers four or five times.

"Maybe people won't even believe this story."

It's not the first big win the store has facilitated, but it was for the current owners.

Both American citizens, the couple immigrated in 2016 and have been working at the store since. About a year-and-a-half ago, they took over the business.

One ticket delivered a $150,000-plus payout to the purchaser, but the rest of the store's results were in the $500 to $1,000 range, Roshani Patel said.

After the fact, Krunal Patel thought of the possibility of just keeping the ticket. The customer had been planning to throw it away, but that wouldn't have squared with his principles — that money is worth a lot more if it's earned.

As for the winner, he's already claimed the prize, they said.

According to the Georgia Lottery's website, one of the three Hot Millions prizes remains unclaimed.