Email blasts and phishing scams have made digital housekeeping a particularly tedious task for most, but here’s good one reason not to sleep on the “spam” folder.
Laura Spears didn’t know she was going treasure hunting when she opened the spam folder of her email account. But while searching for another misfiled message, the 55-year-old from Oakland County, Michigan stumbled on an extraordinary subject line.
“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,” she said.
Spears had hit the $3 million jackpot with Michigan Lottery’s Mega Millions on New Year’s Eve, according to sweepstakes organizers.
But it wasn’t until January that spears stumbled upon an email alerting of her win — since she had forgotten to check the winning numbers at the time of their selection.
She logged in to her online lottery account to confirm the award.
“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!”
The lottery had advertised a $1 million prize, but Spears had opted to pay an extra $1 for her ticket to earn the “megaplier” upgrade, which promised to triple her winnings.
She also said she’d made some adjustments to her email inbox settings. “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.
Spears and her family are now looking forward to her early retirement, she said.