Lotto player calls family, thinking he won $10,000. Turns out, he won much more
When Clifford Briggs learned he had won $10,000 on a Maryland lottery ticket, he started calling his family and friends to share the good news.
Little did Briggs know, he would have to call them back, as his prize was really much more, Maryland Lottery officials said in an Aug. 29 news release.
After buying some groceries, the Silver Spring man also bought six Double Your Money scratch-off tickets at the Wheaton store’s lottery kiosk, lottery officials said.
Briggs scratched one of his tickets, but not in its entirety, and saw he had matched some of the winning numbers for a $10,000 prize, lottery officials said.
Excitedly, Briggs called friends and family.
But then, lottery officials said, he scratched the $10 ticket some more and found another matching number that came with a $10,000 prize.
Briggs realized he should just scratch the rest of his ticket, and, “when it was all said and done, his ticket showed a $100,000 top-prize winner,” lottery officials said.
Shrouded in disbelief, Briggs “made a copy of the ticket and took it to a nearby 7-Eleven convenience store to scan it,” lottery officials said.
Sure enough, when he scanned his ticket, the message confirmed his $100,000 win.
“I guess it’s real,” Briggs told lottery officials he thought to himself.
Briggs, a retired railroad worker and Army veteran, said he has won several prizes from Maryland lottery games and casinos in the past, “but this is his biggest single prize to date.”
Briggs told lottery officials he plans to pay off his car with his winnings, then tuck the remaining funds away in savings.
Wheaton is about a 35-mile drive southwest from Baltimore.
This story was originally published September 2, 2025 at 3:42 PM with the headline "Lotto player calls family, thinking he won $10,000. Turns out, he won much more."
