$10 lottery ticket turns into $1 million win for NC man. ‘Couldn’t be more excited’

A North Carolina man spent $10 on a lottery ticket — and got much more money in return.

Lee Kilby checked his ticket and discovered it was worth $1 million, the N.C. Education Lottery said Monday in a news release.

“When I scratched it off, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Kilby told the lottery. “It was surreal. I was shocked more than anything.”

Kilby’s big surprise came after officials said he took a trip to the Village Market in North Wilkesboro, a Wilkes County town that’s roughly 55 miles west of Winston-Salem.

That’s where Kilby decided to try his luck on a scratch-off for the 50X the Cash game. It turns out, his ticket had the last remaining jackpot of the game’s top $1 million prizes, according to the N.C. Education Lottery.

“I couldn’t be more excited about winning,” Kilby said in the lottery’s news release.

Kilby, who lives in Wilkesboro, chose to take his prize in a lump sum and kept $424,503 after taxes, officials said.

It’s not the first time a big windfall has caught someone off guard in North Carolina.

In April, a lottery player who hit the jackpot three years after his first big win said he was “shocked.”

Two years earlier, a grandfather couldn’t drive after a $10 million prize left him stunned, McClatchy News reported.