Lottery ticket stood out to NC man — then he hit the jackpot. ‘It just caught my eye’
A lottery ticket stood out to a North Carolina man — then he bought it and hit the jackpot.
“It just caught my eye,” Lewis Moreland told the N.C. Education Lottery. “It was the first time buying a green ticket.”
Moreland scored $200,000, the top prize in the Emerald 8s game. He tried his luck at a Kangaroo Express convenience store in Broadway, a roughly 40-mile drive southwest from Raleigh.
Moreland was attracted to one of the game’s $5 tickets, which was his first scratch-off purchase in “a while.” He beat 1-in-1.2 million odds to win big, lottery officials wrote on their website and in a Feb. 14 news release.
“It was a good feeling,” Moreland said.
But he was skeptical about the win at first. He was with his wife when he checked his ticket and was left in disbelief.
“I was just like, ‘Am I looking at this correctly,’” Moreland told lottery officials. “Lo and behold that’s what was there.”
Moreland, who is from Lee County, kept $143,501 after taxes. He plans to invest some of his prize money and prepare for retirement.
It’s not the first time a lottery player has scored a life-changing prize after being drawn to a ticket. Another North Carolina winner liked the colors on the scratch-off that made her much richer, McClatchy News reported in August.
This story was originally published February 16, 2025 at 12:58 PM with the headline "Lottery ticket stood out to NC man — then he hit the jackpot. ‘It just caught my eye’."
