How Does The 8.88 Million Lottery Prize Claim Process Work?

I enjoyed playing scratch-off tickets. I felt restless if I did not scratch one for a single day. After becoming familiar with the shop owner, I always scratched first and paid later. One day, the scratch-off ticket I took revealed a million-dollar prize. The shop attendant, Chloe Byrne, snatched the ticket from my hand. “You never paid for this scratch-off ticket! Taking it without asking makes you a thief! But look, I’m in a good mood right now, so I can’t be bothered to argue with you. Just get out of here.” Her straight-up robbery act nearly made me laugh. “I scratched this ticket! You saw the big prize and decided to claim it as your own. That makes you the real thief.” Chloe was shameless and would not back down. “I don’t care who’s a thief or not. This ticket is mine, and nobody’s taking it from me!” Seeing her like that, I made a call. “Lucky Mart on Spring Street has been stealing customers’ winning tickets and refusing to pay. Revoke their license effective today.”

At the company’s year-end party, management tried to cut costs by using junk as raffle items. The prize box was filled with bottle caps, instant noodle wrappers, toothpaste boxes, and other trash. Everyone was only allowed to pick one item and scan the QR code on it. Whether you won anything depended entirely on luck. I casually picked up a bottle cap and unexpectedly won a car worth 500,000 dollars. As soon as the vice president found out, he rejected my win and demanded that I hand over the prize. “The company spent 20 dollars to get these raffle items from a recycler. Any prizes won have to be recorded in the books as company assets. They belong to the company.” My boss reprimanded me as well, “Have you lost your mind because you’ve been poor? Do you think you could have won without the company? You don’t know how to be grateful, and now, you’re trying to take company property. Stop causing a scene!” I did not argue and calmly handed over the bottle cap. Then, I turned around and called one of our clients. My boss had forgotten one thing: I was the company’s top salesperson. If he insisted on crossing me, I would make him lose five million.

At my eighteenth birthday celebration, my cousin gave me a half-scratched lottery ticket as a coming-of-age gift. When he realized I'd won twenty dollars, he suddenly demanded to buy the ticket from me for two hundred thousand. Something about it felt wrong, and I refused. Then he snapped. Like a man gone mad, he cursed me, wishing me dead, and in front of all the guests, shoved me off the balcony. Dozens of people watched, including my own parents, silently condoning him—joining in, shouting that I deserved to die. And then I opened my eyes… and I was back half an hour earlier. My cousin sneered, tossing the lottery ticket toward me, speaking the same familiar words.

After I won a total of one million dollars from the lottery, I planned to spend four hundred thousand dollars paying off my wife Jocelyn's debts, then buy our son, Sean, the sports models and Lego set he had always wanted. But after waiting and waiting, the only thing I got was a call from my son. "Dad, there's an event at the kindergarten today, so go eat by yourself. Mommy and I will miss you!" I said nothing. Because just half a minute earlier, a screen of bullet comments had suddenly appeared in front of my eyes. "The supporting male lead is just so sad. He's working three jobs to pay off the female lead's debts, and even his stomach is bleeding due to pure exhaustion. Meanwhile, the female lead is out buying the male lead a gold watch!" "But if the supporting male lead doesn't work himself to death, how are the male lead and female lead supposed to end up together?" At first, I did not believe those comments. But just then, my phone buzzed, and a credit card charge alert came in. My stomach dropped. I never would have thought the wife who always seemed to love me so deeply and the son I had worked so hard to raise would lie to me like this. In that case, my ten million lottery winnings had nothing to do with them anymore.

After winning 800 thousand dollars, the first thing I did was rush to the hospital to pay for my daughter's surgery and treatment. Then, out of nowhere, a colleague called. "There's an extremely urgent situation at the company. You need to come back and handle it right now!" My husband took the bank card from my hand and, with thoughtful understanding, said, "Tell me the PIN. I'll go pay for Alicia's surgery. You head back to the company and focus on work." In my past life, I trusted him without hesitation and hurried back to the office. Before my daughter could even make it into surgery, I received a police summons instead. It turned out my husband had conspired with my colleague to file a report against me, pinning the crime of embezzling company funds—money my colleague had actually stolen—on me. With no money for treatment, my daughter died in the hospital. My parents, shattered by grief, suffered heart attacks and passed away. I ended my own life in prison, consumed by bitterness and regret. After death, my soul drifted to where my husband was vacationing abroad. I heard him say to my colleague with my own ears, "That stupid woman wins such a huge jackpot and only knows how to waste it on that worthless daughter's medical bills, dragging me into a life of hardship! "Now their whole family's deaths have bought us endless wealth and luxury. Consider it that idiot woman's compensation to me. Hahaha!" When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the very moment my husband took the bank card from my hand. This time, I still told him the transfer PIN.

I'm having a mental breakdown as I face a clogged drain with my feverish and fussing daughter in my arms. Meanwhile, my husband has reserved a hotel to celebrate another woman's birthday. My mother-in-law spits on the floor. "This is what you deserve. You can't even capture a man's heart!" I clench a fist around the winning lottery ticket in my pocket. I want to get a divorce.