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Oakland County Woman Wins $3 Million Lottery Prize After Checking Spam Folder

(CBS DETROIT) - An Oakland County woman decided to check her spam folder in her email account, and to her surprise, she found an email saying that she had won a $3 million Michigan Lottery Mega Millions prize.

An Oakland County woman won a $3 million Mega Millions prize. | Credit: Michigan Lottery

Laura Spears, 55, matched the five white balls – 02-05-30-46-61 – in the Dec. 31, 2021, drawing to win a $1 million prize.

The prize was multiplied due to the Megaplier, which players can add for $1 per play to multiply non-jackpot prizes by up to five times.

The lucky player bought her winning ticket on MichiganLottery.com.

"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," said Spears. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account.

"That's when I saw an email from the Lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It's all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million!"

Spears plans to share her winnings with her family and retire earlier than initially planned.

"I definitely added the Michigan Lottery to my safe senders list just in case I ever get lucky enough to receive another email about a huge prize," Spears said.

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