Sometimes doing something accidently can lead to a profound change.  This was especially true for Lloyd Almand, who made a mistake that suddenly became his treasure.  A retired firefighter, Lloyd did not intentionally buy the North 40 Scratch ticket that garnered him the game’s last top prize of $40,000.  He was buying his tickets from the Lottery vending machine at the Albertsons in Eagle when he inadvertently hit the button that bought the game.

“I was trying to close another window on the screen, but in hitting it twice I accidently selected the North 40 ticket,” explained Lloyd.  “It’s not as pretty of a ticket as the other games, so I was a little disappointed when it popped out.”

His disappointment soon faded.  He played the ticket and thought it was a non-winner.  So, he put the ticket in a book for a couple of days.  When he collected his other $40 worth of winning tickets, he re-discovered the North 40 ticket in the book.  He looked at it and realized he had matched the number 50.   Unsure how he’d missed seeing that match, he scratched off the prize underneath to see what he had won.

“I thought it was maybe $40.  Then maybe $400.  Then I had to wake my wife up because it looked like I had won $40,000 and I didn’t think that was quite right,” said Lloyd.

It wasn’t until he received the real check in his hands at the Lottery that he believed he truly had won the game’s last top prize.

“We’ve never had this much money all at once before,” added Lloyd.  “We’re going to put this in the bank and then sit down and talk about what to do with it.”

For selling the winning ticket, Albertsons receives $4,000.  With Lloyd claiming the last top prize, the game North 40 has officially ended.