Authorities say an oblivious lottery winner is now the subject of a massive manhunt currently underway in California.
The mystery man is identified only by a fuzzy surveillance camera image which shows him happily exiting a convenient store with $75 worth of earnings -- only a mere fraction of his actual $75,000 scratch-off prize.
Before the gas station’s clerk recognized his drastically bad math though, the mega-lucky, shortchanged gambler had driven away.
Store footage shows the 20-something was wearing a backwards baseball cap and, after collecting on his Wild West scratcher, departed in a “large” truck … but that rather generic description may not be enough to go on now, searchers worry.
Which is why officials from the state’s lottery commission are once more urging anyone cashing in a winning lottery ticket -- no matter how small the payoff may seem to them -- to SIGN IT FIRST.
“In our business we’ve seen it all,” one of their representatives told Good Morning America today. So, (just for the record again), “We strongly encourage all players to turn that ticket around and sign the ticket in ink. That way it’s yours.”
If the man in the video feed is in fact the shortchanged lottery winner, he has about six months before his ticket actually expires to claim the balance owed to him.
That would be $74,925.00, to the penny.