Metro Detroit Man Has Sleepless Night After Hitting $1.25M Lotto 47 Jackpot

An Oakland County man said he couldn't sleep after finding out he hit the $1.25 million Michigan Lotto 47 jackpot before bed, according to lottery officials.

The lucky 73-year-old player, who chose to remain anonymous, bought his winning ticket online at MichiganLottery.com.

The ticket matched the six Lotto 47 numbers (02-12-20-30-31-42) in the Sept. 9 drawing, according to lottery officials.

"I regularly play Lotto 47, and one night while I was buying my tickets online, my wife said to me: ‘Are you ever going to win big?’” the man said. "A few nights later, I logged into my account to check my ticket before going to bed, and to my surprise, a pop-up came up saying I won $1.25 million."

The man said he and his wife initially thought it was a scam. So he said he logged out of the account and then back in to find the winning notification still active. That's when he said he finally believed the winning numbers were real.

"Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep that night," he said.

The couple then surprised their kids with the news on a FaceTime call.

"Once all the kids were on the call, I sent them the screenshot of the prize notification and told them to look at my text," the man said. "It was fun to watch each of their reactions!"

He chose to receive his winnings as a one-time lump sum payment of about $866,000 rather than annuity payments for the full amount.

He said he plans to save his winnings.