Lottery player was feeling lucky after $250 win. Then he ‘about fell off the couch’

Already with $250 in winnings, a Michigan man’s next lottery ticket purchase made for the luckiest day of his life, he said.

Greg Osantowski, of Gaylord, became a big winner in the Fantasy 5 lottery game after purchasing a ticket with his earlier instant-game winnings, Michigan Lottery officials said in a June 29 news release.

He sat down to check his ticket the next day on Aug. 8, uncovering the winning numbers one-by-one.

“After I matched three, I was pretty happy. Then, I matched the fourth and thought, ‘Wow! I really have a shot to win this thing!’” he told lottery officials. “I slowly uncovered the fifth number and when I saw the three, my heart started jumping. When I saw I had matched the number 39, I about fell off the couch!”

By matching the five numbers — 03, 10, 28, 35, 39 — he’d won the game’s $105,000 jackpot.

Osantowksi, 60, told lottery officials “winning is a real gift.”

“We’d been trying to figure out how to pay for a new pole barn and then I won this prize. It really was the luckiest day of my life!” he said.

Fantasy 5 costs $1 to play and offers a top prize of $100,000, which grows daily until there is a winner. Odds of winning the jackpot are 1-in-575,757.

Gaylord is in northern Michigan, about 230 miles northwest of Detroit.

This story was originally published August 29, 2023 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Lottery player was feeling lucky after $250 win. Then he ‘about fell off the couch’."